physical address extention

Hi, I am trying to get this tho work /pae. but all it does is gives me the blue screen of death. tried it also with /noexecute=optin /pae

I am running XP sp3.

any suggestions?

thanks in advance.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system...ae/paedrv.mspx

I assume you've read that? (I tried and failed ^_^)

So, you're trying to run >4GB on a 32-bit processor, yes?

Hi Snograt, yes, I have read that article. Trying to sqz that .5gig in, lol. I think it is because of sp3. I recall it working before on sp2..maybe it was on my old comp.

/PAE is automatically enabled in XP after SP1 I believe. And it's not going to work since apps need to be specifically written for it, which no game is. Only Microsoft's own server apps support it iirc. Just buy Windows 7 and wait 3 months like you're supposed to. :P

not true, according to this article http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system...ae/paedrv.mspx, it suppose to work. I have a XP/sp3 system at work and it is enabled and shows in properties. And I preordered Win7 played around with win7 RC, went back to XP until QA of windows7. anyhow, I'll wait for win7 and build new comp then also.

It says on that page all versions of Windows XP only support a maximum of 4gb physical memory. The /PAE switch is not supported by that OS.

Operating system ---------- Maximum memory support with PAE

Windows 2000 Advanced Server ---------- 8 GB of physical RAM
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server ---------- 32 GB of physical RAM
Windows XP (all versions) ---------- 4 GB of physical RAM*
Windows Server 2003 (and SP1), Standard Edition ---------- 4 GB of physical RAM*
Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition ---------- 32 GB of physical RAM
Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition ---------- 64 GB of physical RAM
Windows Server 2003 SP1, Enterprise Edition ---------- 64 GB of physical RAM
Windows Server 2003 SP1, Datacenter Edition ---------- 128 GB of physical RAM

* Total physical address space is limited to 4 GB on these versions of Windows.

yes I know about the 4gig limitation with XP. that is what I am trying to get...actually 3.5gig. but it is not working. =(

Your videocard is probably 512mb, and your kernel drivers are another 256mb. It differs from comp to comp obviously, but that is a good guess.

please elaborate on the video card thingy, how does that affect my system memory or causing windows with the /pae switch not to read up to 3.5gb? and yes my vcard is 512mb. shouldn't I be able to get atleast 3.5gig. I know I wont get the full 4gb.

The fact is, I cant' even put in that switch without getting the blue screen.

any help is greatly appreciated.

Your CPU has two way of accessing devices, through the address bus (32-bit wide, was built for accessing RAM modules) and through the I/O Ports (slower access, requires more CPU cycles). To speed up certain tasks, OS's can re-map devices that would normally require I/O instructions to physical memory addresses. This lets the CPU access these devices more quickly and more easily.

In Windows, this is usually all of your Video Memory and all of your Kernel and Kernel Drivers. Most XP systems will have a max of 3.25gb or less because of this. If you had a good videocard (1gb), you'd probably only get 2.5gb to 2.75gb of system ram. It's not that the RAM isn't there, it's just that all the addresses used to access it have been re-mapped for a better cause.

A single 32-bit process can only access 2gb of memory anyways, so it's pointless trying to get more than that.

The /PAE switch does not work on XP at all. The /PAE switch is only designed for processors which support the PAE instruction set (yours probably doesn't), motherboards which support it, and most importantly, Operating Systems that support it. The /PAE switch was designed for Servers running 32-bit OS's so that Microsoft's specially designed server applications (FTP, Web Server, SQL) could access more than 4gb of system memory.

Kuntz,Thank you!

you made that very understandable, hehe. So..I should run the 64bit of windows7 when I get it then. I think it is my MB that does not support the /pae switch.

Once again thank you for the info.

What MotherBoard are you using?
BTW - Windows XP 64bit Professional supports upto 128GB without PAE. Most early mother boards only allow access of upto 3.5GB the of RAM the rest is reserved for system memory uses. If he has one of those MotherBoards PAE will not work anymore.

motherboard is an Asus P5GDC-Pro
cpu=3.20 HT 3.78 oc'd (non dual core) =(
4gb ram pc5300