how tomake vista 32 bit see 4gb???

B

Burn_all

New Member
yea so i serched a lil thru the forums coudlent find and awnser so here i ask... how do i get my laptop see its full 4gb of ram its only seeing 3 gb on my 32 vista prem... thanks
 
g25racer said:
Its called google!!
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why even post this?

You can't, unless you upgrade to 64-bit Vista. This is due to the 32-bit memory limitations.
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Wrong, 32Bit OSes can address a maximum of 4gigs of RAM.

How to fix it?

You must be running hardware that supports it, you must be running Vista SP1, and you must have a BIOS that supports the full memory addressing. Since all three are limits of why you can't see a full 4gig of RAM.

http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx

From the horses mouth!:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us
 
Even though there is hardware support for more than 4GB, Microsoft will not allow 32bit Vista to go above 4G. SP1 just changes how the memory is displayed a couple of places, you cannot use more of it just because you update.
 
^^ I have heard it is possible for 32bit to be able to use all of the 4gb with some reg tweaks but, no guarantees.
 
You cannot tweak Vista to do that. There are many rumours about pae and vista. Many of them are not true. This is one of them. Only server editions of windows supports >4GB
 
there are still ways to address up to 4gigs, a lot of it is how BIOS limits it, and of course Windows doesn't take over properly. Other 32bit OSes can see and address 4gigs of memory.
 
I understand and have read Microsofts explanation, soooooo it must be purely software limited if you can purchase/upgrade to Vista 64 bit and immediately be able to use more than 3.1 GIG.

Right/Wrong :confused:
 
tlarkin said:
there are still ways to address up to 4gigs, a lot of it is how BIOS limits it, and of course Windows doesn't take over properly. Other 32bit OSes can see and address 4gigs of memory.
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I believe the keyword is "others". To make space for it all, you need to address more than 4GB. That is beyond Vista.
 
tyttebøvs said:
I believe the keyword is "others". To make space for it all, you need to address more than 4GB. That is beyond Vista.
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There is away to address more, through BIOS configurations and PAE. I have never personally tried or confirmed that you can do so with Windows but I have read that it is possible.

I guess you can try that at your own risk.
 
But as said, and stated in those Microsoft KBs, Vista cannot go above 4GB no matter how hard you try.

A note on that PAE monster: if you google "Data Execution Prevention", you'll find out why Vista supports PAE. But even if it is actually technically possible to address >4G, the memory manager doesn't allow it. So it is a no go.
 
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tyttebøvs said:
But as said, and stated in those Microsoft KBs, Vista cannot go above 4GB no matter how hard you try.

A note on that PAE monster: if you google "Data Execution Prevention", you'll find out why Vista supports PAE. But even if it is actually technically possible to address >4G, the memory manager doesn't allow it. So it is a no go.
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Yeah I agree, but Microsoft says lots of things that aren't true and I think we can also both agree on that as well.
 
There may be third party hacks to do it but a plain old retail 32bit vista will not. Last I saw, Windows limits address space on 32bit machines with PAE enabled for driver compatability.
 
tlarkin said:
Yeah I agree, but Microsoft says lots of things that aren't true and I think we can also both agree on that as well.
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They go to great lengths to document how anything above 4G is just being ignored, though. And I have yet to see anyone being able to do it.

It is also worth noticing that most people already have pae enabled, because of that dep-thing.
 
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tyttebøvs said:
They go to great lengths to document how anything above 4G is just being ignored, though. And I have yet to see anyone being able to do it.

It is also worth noticing that most people already have pae enabled, because of that dep-thing.
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It is in their benefit in doing so, making you pay $10 for 64 bit memory addressing. It is just a way to make a buck.
 
To limit Vista or to lie? And I don't think they would lie like that in their documentation, they can't. That would break a lot of things, when programmers write stuff
 
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