Get upto 128GB with PAE in Windows XP 32bit

[Dibya]

Grab my patched files from here :: http://www23.zippyshare.com/v/o85jZjmh/file.html
*Replace Kernels and hals (all exe and dll files) in System32
*Replace All Sys files in System32\Drivers
*Put \PAE Switch in Boot.ini
*Enjoy !! More than 4GB Ram in Windows XP 32bit
SystemRequirement :
*Any Processor with SSE2 instruction set
*Windows XP 32bit Sp3 ( Sp1 does not need any patch)
*More than 4GB Ram

[ovctvct]

No offense, but why use x86 with 4GB or more RAM? Why not just use x64? Regardless what PAE or whatever hack you do, individual apps can't get over 2GB limit, so for 4GB or more it's recommended to go x64.

[sparcdr]

The only reason Microsoft offered PAE support on server editions was due to the modular nature of their servicing stacks and 3rd party apps. Since none on their own needed more than 1gb on average, workgroups would typically pile every sort of service onto one machine before x64 was a thing. The only apps that need more than 2GB are games, modeling/cad software and modern web browsers (Chrome, Firefox namely) though some of these apps "prefork" (Think Apache) sub-processes which workaround the hard limit. It's completely reasonable to use a 32-bit OS, but that has mainly been reserved for ARM devices. Every PC I've seen retailed locally since 2009 has came with 4GB ram (399+ price range) and a 64-bit OS pre-installed.

[Windows OS]

Every PC I've seen retailed locally since 2009 has came with 4GB ram (399+ price range) and a 64-bit OS pre-installed.

Yeah. I think that's mainly because of upgradability, just in case some users might want to upgrade their ram past 4 GB without having to buy a different copy of Windows (as most likely, the copy included in recovery media is 32 bit if the system came with 32 bit Windows).

But, I still recommend 64 bit Windows if you have 4 GB or more of RAM, as some newer software REQUIRE 64 bit Windows to even run. Even without that, the only real benefit to running 32 bit Windows is if you need to run DOS or 16 bit Windows applications (as 32 bit Windows [even up to Windows 10] still have the NT Virtual DOS Machine). But, if you don't need that (or are using DOSBox/an virtual machine program to run legacy applications), go 64 bit.

[Hyoenmadan86]

The only reason Microsoft offered PAE support on server editions was due to the modular nature of their servicing stacks and 3rd party apps. Since none on their own needed more than 1gb on average, workgroups would typically pile every sort of service onto one machine before x64 was a thing. The only apps that need more than 2GB are games, modeling/cad software and modern web browsers (Chrome, Firefox namely) though some of these apps "prefork" (Think Apache) sub-processes which workaround the hard limit. It's completely reasonable to use a 32-bit OS, but that has mainly been reserved for ARM devices. Every PC I've seen retailed locally since 2009 has came with 4GB ram (399+ price range) and a 64-bit OS pre-installed.

There also was the PAE usermode AWE OS API provided by Windows to overcome the 2GB/3GB 32Bit limitation. Mostly used by DB products like Oracle and MSSQL, before 64bit was a thing, it uses a similar trick as the older DOS EMM386/EMS to map in/out pages from the 2GB space and allocate them in the extra memory, but unlike the older DOS trick, the app had to be programmed specifically to use AWE. Also access to the extra memory was slower than access to "local" memory, so the API never gained traction and kept used only in DB world until 64bit finally buried it in the computer history (well, not really, actually 64bit in x86 makes extensive use of PAE technology ).

[Goldfish64]

I'll just leave this here:

Yes that is Windows 2000 Datacenter in PAE mode on 22GB RAM.

In general the reason why it was disabled on client versions is because of stability issues with drivers above the 4GB RAM mark iirc.

[louisw3]

Didn't NT 4.0 Enterprise support this as well?

[Dibya]

THere large number of apps still need 32bit os to run so i shared . All feedback are welcome

[Bob Pony]

Why would anyone need this patch? There's Windows XP 64-bit edition out there, and I could it being more better than using the patched Windows XP 32-bit in my opinion.

[haroldas.velioniskis]

Yes, WInNT 4.0 Enterprise supported up to 64 GB of RAM
Windows 2000 Advanced Server supported up to 8 GB and Datacenter Edition up to 32GB
But memory support in NT 4 was just theoretical because at the time there wasn't such a system which can accommodate that much RAM and be compatible with NT

[louisw3]

Yes, WInNT 4.0 Enterprise supported up to 64 GB of RAM
Windows 2000 Advanced Server supported up to 8 GB and Datacenter Edition up to 32GB
But memory support in NT 4 was just theoretical because at the time there wasn't such a system which can accommodate that much RAM and be compatible with NT

I had an 8 way Pentium pro with 8gb and NT4 Enterprise although when I got it I upgraded it to 2003 so I never messed with Enterprise NT 4 that much. But the server could take a heck of a lot more RAM. There was some inane machines back then that I'm sure could. But they sure we're not normal machines

[sparcdr]

As mentioned by Windows OS, some people need WOW16 and NTVDM support for legacy applications. NTVDM is and has always been rubbish though. The choice to not use/support PAE on client editions after XP SP1 is as guessed due to drivers. In current times, NVIDIA's post-328 series drivers (Maybe it was 346) which is required 900 series and higher fail to work with community developed PAE hacks (Up to Windows 7) on GPUs with more than 4GB of dedicated vram due to the similar memory pinhole / shadow issue (Think AMIBIOS circa 1997) that affects mapping the memory segments in direct conflict with the system memory due to decisions made with the PCIe architecture.

Microsoft supplied and WHQL'd drivers function without incident on PAE, and rumor is that AMD/ATI cards work with acceleration on PAE hacked installs. NVIDIA stopped putting in the extra effort but history which gets mentioned a lot here clearly shows it was once possible, so it's not due to a limitation of the operating system. The obvious solution would be to null out the remaining memory so the OS remains unaware of its existence and employ an SMBIOS hack to trick the OS into thinking the GPU only had 3GB. The 960 is actually technically supported by the last NVIDIA driver versions in PAE; my 980 has 8GB so it's a non-starter. Yes, I installed XP SP3 (32-bit) on a Z97 board; but Intel hasn't updated drivers/chipset software for newer USB3 boards for XP and the last board capable of doing both hacked PAE and native USB3 would be the H67 with a pre Maxwell GPU/Haswell CPU with a 4GB 970 at most. In a way this is a repeat of Windows 98SE failing to install/work natively during the Prescott or newer era. It's not that the chipsets/hardware doesn't support it, but due to upstream depreciation, various issues have crept.

My first server I bought off ebay as a teenager was a Compaq ProLiant 8500 with 4 550MHz P3 CPUs and 8GB of ram, which was a ton even when I got it. For fun I used Windows 2000 Datacenter SP1 on the machine before submitting to Gentoo for some more serious load tests. At the time I was using a K7, and the typical amount of RAM installed was 512MB-1GB, or 2GB for an enthusiast/gamer. The PAE spec written by Intel likely came in response to DEC's Alpha and the R4000 MIPS inherently being 64-bit as a stop-gap measure when UNIX workstations were still eating their cake. Intel and Microsoft have always been cozy as it was. The only system to rival the physical memory limits of actually produced boards by DIGITAL and Sun Microsystems would be the SGI Origin. Some of the systems made by those three UNIX vendors supported NT, which likely also pushed Microsoft into squashing bugs that could had potentially limited memory expansion, even if on x86 16mb was the norm at the time.

[louisw3]

Where I worked in 2001 we had two sun ultra 10000s. I forget how much RAM I want to say it was 16GB but it did have 32 processors. I did sneak a copy of quake world on there and had a screen full of sessions going connected to itself. The box was a dud though the CPUs had a catastrophic cache bug, and by the time we got replacement parts and the Oracle domains configured correctly the box was already obsolete.

That is the thing about these "hardware solutions to software problems" is that the useful window is pretty small, as the rest of the world catches up.

Just as at another company that employed an aging starship captain as a mascot, we had this monster Dec Alpha box with insane specs to run MSSQL 7. When you need the performance today you don't have any choice but as that gap closes it really doesn't make any sense.

[MrFreeman]

Why would anyone need this patch? There's Windows XP 64-bit edition out there, and I could it being more better than using the patched Windows XP 32-bit in my opinion.

the 64-bit version of Windows XP is filled with all sorts of crazy issues.

[Dibya]

Why would anyone need this patch? There's Windows XP 64-bit edition out there, and I could it being more better than using the patched Windows XP 32-bit in my opinion.

the 64-bit version of Windows XP is filled with all sorts of crazy issues.

That occurs with RTM build but Sp2 for XPx64 has solved all. Like they did with vista

[Wheatley]

For the record, when I used XP x64 edition w/sp2 as my main OS back a few years ago, I didn't have any real issues. Drivers were available for all the parts I had, and all the programs I used worked correctly. But of course, if you had incompatible hardware or badly made/legacy programs, the experience would be very different.

[nickenzi]

There's Windows XP 64-bit edition out there

Careful now, that's Itanium speak.

[Sumanai]

Careful now, that's Itanium speak.

There are two versions of XP 64-bit:

1. Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, for Itanium, based Windows XP code
2. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, for AMD64, based 2003 Server code.

In most cases the need to use the second version.

I have over 4 years of using XP prof x64, in my opinion, is the best OS from MS.

[Dibya]

Careful now, that's Itanium speak.

There are two versions of XP 64-bit:

1. Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, for Itanium, based Windows XP code
2. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, for AMD64, based 2003 Server code.

In most cases the need to use the second version.

I have over 4 years of using XP prof x64, in my opinion, is the best OS from MS.

Man if you had proper hardware and software
Both XP 32bit and 64bit will kill any other os but no one wants to believe it

[ovctvct]

You don't even need to have that much ram for xp x64, even with 1GB ram XP x64 only uses 160MB on idle(that's less than 16%) and with all updates installed, and btw every hardware I see around has xp x64 drivers, if you run 10 x64 even with 4GB ram it uses 40% of it while doing nothing.

[MrFreeman]

You don't even need to have that much ram for xp x64, even with 1GB ram XP x64 only uses 160MB on idle(that's less than 16%) and with all updates installed, and btw every hardware I see around has xp x64 drivers, if you run 10 x64 even with 4GB ram it uses 40% of it while doing nothing.

That's just because W10 is just simply bloated.

[LuLu]

now comes the wave of comments "unused RAM is wasted RAM"

[Dibya]

now comes the wave of comments "unused RAM is wasted RAM"

Man people who use Maya , 3dMAx they know the value of RAm .
For most users 4Gb ram is enough

[Dibya]

You don't even need to have that much ram for xp x64, even with 1GB ram XP x64 only uses 160MB on idle(that's less than 16%) and with all updates installed, and btw every hardware I see around has xp x64 drivers, if you run 10 x64 even with 4GB ram it uses 40% of it while doing nothing.

That's just because W10 is just simply bloated.

People doesnot want to believe that .
Some says even Xp is slower than 10 ., i donot know where there head belongs

[ovctvct]

Or if you use VMs then you probably know how much RAM means, but if you use 10 x64 4GB is just not enough,regardless of what your PC manufacturer claims, you need 6GB+. Now of course, XP x64 will only use 15% of 4GB RAM when idle. 10 x64 will use 30% if you don't have any antivirus. Add antivirus and you eat 45-50%. Open edge and you go to 65%+. IMHO they should raise the recommended ram for x64 10 to 6GB. I can't imagine it running on 2GB without swapping massively.
But still, using PAE, even if you have 128GB RAM, individual apps will only use max 2 or 4GB of it(if large adress aware).

For most users 4Gb ram is enough

Not if you use chrome and open multiple tabs. I only have 4GB and I already start to see the limitations of it(I run VMs). Running 1 VM with 1GB ram to it alone bumps my ram to 50% usage, open a web browser and I get 60%+ usage.

The problem is that I see a lot of new PCs with only 4GB ram and w10 x64, and junky CPUs like celeron. People complain about them being slow. The only thing I can suggest is to make sure you have at least 6GB for 10, and avoid those crappy celeron or pentium CPUs at all costs(they should not even be sold IMHO).