On 22/12/2010 6:27 PM, Paul wrote:
A 32 bit OS, can access more than 4GB of RAM, by using PAE. The
results you see today, are design and licensing considerations
by Microsoft. As currently set up, there isn't a way for your SP3
OS, to read or write to "high memory". But if you went back to
SP1 Service Pack, it might have been possible. (Or before
whatever Service Pack, brought support for DEP and NX.)

http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer....nse/memory.htm

That link doesn't work, but I think I read it months before, so I
remember the gist of it. The PAE support is artificially limited by
Microsoft based on operating system licenses. For example, Windows XP's
and Windows Server 2003's PAE is limited to 4GB, while WinServ
Enterprise Ed 2003's PAE goes upto 32GB, and WinServ Datacenter Ed 2003
goes upto 64GB! These are all 32-bit operating systems too!

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

64-bit Windows also all use the PAE extensions to access the memory
pages above 4GB, however they do it in a more homogeneous way, not
requiring any tricks to fool applications into operating out of their
normal ranges. In this case the PAE isn't a kludge like in 32-bit OSes,
but rather just the standard access method of 64-bit.

Yousuf Khan