PAE on Vista32 with 4gig of Ram

[oconn11]

Hi All
I cannot find a good answer for this, although I believe that it will have no real effect. Has anyone turned on PAE (physical address extensions) on a Vista32 system with 4gig of ram? Thanks all.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366796.aspx

 

[zenmaster]

/PAE will not have any effect on usable memory in Vista.

You will need Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition Server or Better for it to be of use.

 

[russki]

Yeah, I didn't think it was implemented on any desktop MS OSes since PAE is awkward hell.

 

[zenmaster]

There was support for in Windows Windows XP SP0, but support was removed since it likely caused more problems than it helped.

The biggest issue is just bad programming.
Few folks are likely to have tested their software using the alternate memory allocations.

The Server Space is a little different with fewer things running and more need of it.

I would wager /PAE would cause less problems now than it did in the past due to increased 64-Bit Windows Testing.

I actually have a few Windows 2003 Enterprise servers running with /PAE mode because they are running software that will not work under 64-bit software but still do enough tasks that I can use the extra memory.

 

[russki]

I'm with you re: server space. And yes, most of it is bad programming on the application (and driver) side, but that's the problem with PAE - both the OS and applications need to be aware of it. Plus, there's a whole lot of added memory management compared to typical protected mode addressing...

Hopefully, it's all done with now that we have x86-64... Although, clearly, there are still a lot of poorly written apps there (the ones not compatible with 64bit windows).

 

[dengamle]

The PAE kernel in Vista is present to support DEP. That is why it is mentioned i various articles.

Applications only sees virtual addresses, so they don't need to be coded differently to run when the OS is in PAE mode. Only if they need to address more than 2/3 GB, they must turn to something like AWE

 

[russki]

Good point. Still, I think the OP was referring to addressing more than 4 Gb total memory, not even so much addressing more user space. Besides, I am pretty sure you can do /3Gb without PAE.

 

[dengamle]

yes, the /3gb switch can be used without pae.