Using my extra RAM for other things in an old, updated 32-bit XPPro. SP3.

Ant wrote:
On 1/15/2011 3:19 PM PT, Patok typed:

A couple days ago, I upgraded my old 32-bit Windows XP Pro. SP3 (IE6)
system/computer/system to an Intel i7 with 6 GB of RAM. I know that
32-bit operating systems/OS' cannot see all that RAM due to old
software designs' limitations. Currently, my working Windows only sees
about 2.5 GB of physical RAM (shouldn't it be 3 GB though?).

I heard that I can use the unused memory for other things like a RAM
drive for swap files, %temp%, etc. How do I do that?

And yes, I will get 64-bit W7 or another OS one day. At this time, I
am not going to do that since XP Pro. SP3 does fine for what I need.

Thank you in advance.


I quite accidentally came across the Ramdisk product:
http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...tware/ramdisk?
which does exactly what you want, as long as your motherboard has
Physical
Address Extensions enabled. If it does, you can have a nice 2GB ramdisk
for free.
I didn't read this thread carefully, so I don't know if this product was
mentioned, or not. Sorry if it was.

Oooh, I think that's the program I heard about. Free for 4 GB and less.
Sweet.

I'm testing it now, and I can't believe what it's doing :-)
I never thought I'd see WinXP SP3 x32, access memory above
4GB. But that's what they've managed to do, and claim to be
doing it via PAE. Pretty amazing. I'm using mine as a
Page File, as a test :-)

It also passed my HDTune test case. The last time I evaluated
the program, it crashed in the first 30 seconds, as the first
thing I tried on it was HDTune benchmark. The following is
collected while the software is using 2GB above the 4GB mark
with WinXP x32. So now it passes my test case. You'll notice,
there is a slight difference in performance, between the
first 1GB and second 1GB of the Ramdisk.

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/8...am2gbabove.gif

I installed 6GB RAM, and in theory, WinXP x32 can't see the RAM
above the 4GB mark. But that Ramdisk is now running on the 2GB
above the 4GB mark. I figured for sure, it would crash
or error out, or not allow it.

Paul