Single 8GB RAM Stick on Windows XP 32-bit?

Freye · May 6, 2014

Hello all,

I have read these forums for quite sometime as they are filled with useful advice, but I felt it was time I posted a question for myself, as I could not find this information anywhere else.

My situation is that I have a machine with both Windows 8 and 32-bit windows xp installed, where I boot to one or the other depending on what programs I need to use. I am looking to upgrade my RAM, and am wondering if it is possible to install a single 8GB stick and still be able to boot into xp. Will it simply only use the maximum 4GB allowed on 32-bit machines, or will it simply not recognize the stick at all?

Thanks

Danbuscus25 · May 6, 2014

yes, it will still boot up, but xp will only use about 3.5gb of ram.

neieus · May 6, 2014

It will only use up to 3.5GB of ram unless you enable PAE when you will be able to see the entire 8GB. It's pretty simple to enable and requires a reboot to complete.

To make it easy for you here are the instructions on how to enable from Crucial's website. You will be editing your boot.ini file so basically you're going to add /PAE at the end of the line so that it looks like this.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /PAE

http://www.crucial.com/support/physical_address_extension.aspx

nukemaster · May 6, 2014

Even with PAE you can not use more memory for programs and stuff, but you "MAY" be able to run a ramdrive in this extra memory.

Anything from about 3-3.6 gigabytes of memory will be usable. Even things like Video card memory play a role here since it is an address space limit. Dual channel memory provides better performance if your board supports it.

neieus · May 6, 2014

Well this image I took from a 2003 server but 2003 and XP are basically the same and I've done this on XP before.

nukemaster · May 6, 2014

The server versions work different for sure(not that it is anything other than coding to prevent extra memory on a non server version of Windows).

XP
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-ca/lib...vs.85).aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_xp

Server 2003
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-ca/lib...px#physical_memory_limits_windows_server_2003

So unless MS lies XP does not take more then 4 gigabytes of addressable space in its 32 bit releases.

I would feel bad for XP Starter

neieus · May 6, 2014

Well there's only one real way to find out... Unfortunately I don't have a XP machine to try it on since it's been years from the last time I used it. Oh I agree with you there XP starter lol

nukemaster · May 6, 2014

I think for a short while you could make Windows XP use more memory but SP2 patched it away(you could even make a small registry edit to home edition to get the full file system permissions that are not normally available). I do not recommend running XP without patches(hell I would avoid it now if I could).

It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

Freye · May 6, 2014

Thanks for the responses guys. I don't think I'll need more than about 2GB when booting into xp, so as long as it boots I should be fine.

nukemaster · May 6, 2014

Freye :

As long as the board supports sticks of that size(some chipsets/cpus have limits), you will have no actual issues from Windows it self.

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