Anyway around 3.5gb out of 4gb limit???

Dragon_Cooler · Post by **Dragon_Cooler** » Wed May 09, 2007 12:09 am

I am suffering the 32bit limit crap of 4gb. Tis only reporting 3.5 out of 4. I have googled lots and havnt seem to come up with a clear answer, just wanted to see if any of yall have a clear answer. AND NOT IM NOT GOING 64-BIT. LOL

Cheers!!

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed May 09, 2007 6:22 am

Physical Address Extensions (PAE) are your friend if you want to get 4GB working... Not worth the effort to be honest

liqnit · Post by **liqnit** » Wed May 09, 2007 6:43 am

What exacly you need the 4GB Mem in any case without "3GB" switch any application can only use 2GB maximum memory.

The max memory was able to see in a 32Bit OS was 3750MB and that only with no PCI cards (exept the VGA).

Regarding the PAE i join Apoptosis it will not do any good.

Post by **Illuminati** » Wed May 09, 2007 6:58 am

I agree with the above... I've done a little research on PAE for 32-bit OS's... and it basically makes your PC 36-bit, i think. First your motherboard has to support it (which yours probably does) and you have to enable it in the BIOS. Then I've read you will have to tweak some WinXP boot files in order for XP to work with it. And THEN, all of the applications you use have to support PAE or they will crash!

Good luck being 100% compatible... so in the end, it's probably not worth the effort, but if you are feeling adventurous, let us know how it goes... I'm curious because I've never gotten past the research because my 945 chipset motherboard with 4GB RAM does not support PAE, so I'm SOL.

Other than that... GO 64-bit... LOL

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed May 09, 2007 7:04 am

yeah you'll have to modify the boot.ini also like justin noted... i ran 4GB of memory on XP 32-bit for a year and did just fine with the limited amount it gave me.

Bwall · Post by **Bwall** » Wed May 09, 2007 7:26 am

As much as you don't want to do it, the only way your going to get to use the memory is 64-bit Windows.

Xanlamin · Post by **Xanlamin** » Wed May 09, 2007 1:45 pm

I have been running 64-bit for some time now without issues, 64bit is more mainstream now and alot more hardware manuf. are putting out final release drivers for stuff, as for applications I have had no issues getting 64bit version of them and/or running normal 32bit programs.

1 key to remember is 64bit is in essence server 2003 so some things will need to use some server 2003 versions of programs, like Norton, Diskeeper...both need to be server versions of the programs.

Other than that it will run everything...games, programs, whatever you wish really.

Dragon_Cooler · Post by **Dragon_Cooler** » Wed May 09, 2007 5:24 pm

The only reason i am not running 64-bit is because one of the main programs i use didnt work with it (alcohol 120%) but that was when it first came out. Things might have changed since then. Well dang, Thank you everyone for the response, that is what i was afraid of...no real fix.