• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

PAE not working?

hat

hat

Enthusiast
Joined
Nov 20, 2006
Messages
21,762 (3.19/day)
Location
Ohio
System Specs
System Name Starlifter :: Dragonfly
Processor i7 2600k 4.4GHz :: i5 10400
Motherboard ASUS P8P67 Pro :: ASUS Prime H570-Plus
Cooling Cryorig M9 :: Stock
Memory 4x4GB DDR3 2133 :: 2x8GB DDR4 2400
Video Card(s) PNY GTX1070 :: Integrated UHD 630
Storage Crucial MX500 1TB, 2x1TB Seagate RAID 0 :: Mushkin Enhanced 60GB SSD, 3x4TB Seagate HDD RAID5
Display(s) Onn 165hz 1080p :: Acer 1080p
Case Antec SOHO 1030B :: Old White Full Tower
Audio Device(s) Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Bose Companion 2 Series III :: None
Power Supply FSP Hydro GE 550w :: EVGA Supernova 550
Software Windows 10 Pro - Plex Server on Dragonfly
Benchmark Scores >9000
I am running Windows XP 32-bit at the moment and it doesn't appear that PAE is working. I have all 4 gigs of my RAM installed, and I went into the boot.ini file and added the /PAE switch, and then I right click to properties on My Computer, it shows Physical Address Extension, however it still only shows 3.25GB of ram.
 
Read up on PAE, even with it enabled, XP 32-bit only supports 4GB of RAM. There is no way to get XP 32-bit to address more than 4GB of RAM.

I don't know why people believe that PAE will allow them to use more than 4GB of RAM with XP.
 
newtekie1 said:
Read up on PAE, even with it enabled, XP 32-bit only supports 4GB of RAM. There is no way to get XP 32-bit to address more than 4GB of RAM.

I don't know why people believe that PAE will allow them to use more than 4GB of RAM with XP.
Click to expand...
The OP is asking why he cannot use 4GB of RAM not why he cannot use more than 4GB.

hat your right to use all 4GB of RAM got taken away after SP1, apparently due to some badly written drivers that didn't play well with more than 4GB of physical address space being available. Your PAE is probably working fine but because Microsoft decided it was better to limit physical address space to 4GB then the RAM that is remapped above the 4GB boundary because of MMIO, is no longer accessible by the OS.

Somewhat ironically PAE was generally enabled as default from SP2 and onwards however, it was required to enable PAE in SP1, and IIRC earlier, via boot.ini to enable use of remapping and use of all 4GB of RAM.
 
Last edited:
It's seeing 3.5GB minus 256MB for your video memory, don't forget that part.
 
Studabaker said:
It's seeing 3.5GB minus 256MB for your video memory, don't forget that part.
Click to expand...

Exactly...people forget that PAE makes it able to see 4gb of total MEMORY...RAM/GFX Memory, etc.
 
newtekie1 said:
I don't know why people believe that PAE will allow them to use more than 4GB of RAM with XP.
Click to expand...

Because that's what PAE does. XP 32 bit and the lower end servers don't fully support it though. The servers do allow 4GB of RAM no matter what other hardware is snooping memory, datacenter and I think advanced do support 64GB. My current server is a 32 bit machine with 5GB, has 4 more memory slots free if I want more (so if you have some DDR2 ECC/REG left, I can use :)).
 
DanTheBanjoman said:
Because that's what PAE does. XP 32 bit and the lower end servers don't fully support it though. The servers do allow 4GB of RAM no matter what other hardware is snooping memory, datacenter and I think advanced do support 64GB. My current server is a 32 bit machine with 5GB, has 4 more memory slots free if I want more (so if you have some DDR2 ECC/REG left, I can use :)).
Click to expand...

I know what it does on the Server OSes, but you have to take my whole sentence as a complete though.

I don't know why people believe that PAE will allow them to use more than 4GB of RAM with XP.

I don't get it when people see a function that works in server OSes and apply it to a desktop OSes and expect the same results.
 
newtekie1 said:
I know what it does on the Server OSes, but you have to take my whole sentence as a complete though.

I don't know why people believe that PAE will allow them to use more than 4GB of RAM with XP.

I don't get it when people see a function that works in server OSes and apply it to a desktop OSes and expect the same results.
Click to expand...

Like I said, they think it because that's what PAE does. They miss the fact that XP doesn't support it. Apart form the part to support DEP.
 
I already put my xp x64 back on. I was having the same goofy problem with BF2 in 32-bit as I was in 64-bit, so I went back to 64-bit
 
Know what sucks...I'm upgrading to i7 920 and 6gb RAM soon but I'm too lazy to install Vista Ultimate 64bit...so I'm sticking with my 32bit until Windows 7 comes out...haha! I don't want to have to reinstall ALL the programs/games I have (which is a TON).
 
mrw1986 said:
Know what sucks...I'm upgrading to i7 920 and 6gb RAM soon but I'm too lazy to install Vista Ultimate 64bit...so I'm sticking with my 32bit until Windows 7 comes out...haha! I don't want to have to reinstall ALL the programs/games I have (which is a TON).
Click to expand...

I tend to be too lazy mostly as well. I end up with screwed up installations. I prefer Windows not booting after an upgrade, saves me from doing stupid things like that :)

My current installation won't install workstation components or SP1/2 due to a similar screw up. Too lazy to reinstall though. Will do when I receive my new board.


It's not even that much work, as most of my crap is on the network.
 
Reconfiguring games and such is a huge pain in the ass. I just got that job done and over with myself. I didn't install Crysis and Crysis Warhead due to my video card being a little too slow for those games though. I havn't installed all the games I have though. I have TF2 and HL2 in Steam but I never installed Steam yet. I have a ton of games on disc that I never installed yet. I hope to dig up Red Faction one of these days and get that going. I'm really itching to play that one cause I couldn't when I had my 9800gt due to an incompatibility with the game engine and gpu arcitecture. Still, I'd rather my 9800gt not have blown up...
 
DanTheBanjoman said:
I tend to be too lazy mostly as well. I end up with screwed up installations. I prefer Windows not booting after an upgrade, saves me from doing stupid things like that :)

My current installation won't install workstation components or SP1/2 due to a similar screw up. Too lazy to reinstall though. Will do when I receive my new board.


It's not even that much work, as most of my crap is on the network.
Click to expand...

Hahaha you are exactly like me! That's too funny! I host ALL my files on separate drives as well as a NAS system for backup. I just hate reinstalling everything...especially when a lot of the games I have take FOREVER to install. All of my apps are usually quick installations.
 
mrw1986 said:
Hahaha you are exactly like me! That's too funny! I host ALL my files on separate drives as well as a NAS system for backup. I just hate reinstalling everything...especially when a lot of the games I have take FOREVER to install. All of my apps are usually quick installations.
Click to expand...

Indeed I am. Next time I piss someone off I'll just say it's because I'm like you.
 
I've got about 20 apps and god knows how many games... I usually only have 12 games installed, BF2, BF1942, BF2142, both Stalkers, Crysis and Crysis Warhead, Doom 3 (which I have to configure 3 times because of RoE and the opencoop mod), Fallout 3, Oblivion, and TF2 and HL2 through steam. now I only have 8 because I never bothered with Crysis and Crysis Warhead because they run crappy on my 7900, and I never installed steam yet.
 
hat said:
I've got about 20 apps and god knows how many games... I usually only have 12 games installed, BF2, BF1942, BF2142, both Stalkers, Crysis and Crysis Warhead, Doom 3 (which I have to configure 3 times because of RoE and the opencoop mod), Fallout 3, Oblivion, and TF2 and HL2 through steam. now I only have 8 because I never bothered with Crysis and Crysis Warhead because they run crappy on my 7900, and I never installed steam yet.
Click to expand...

I use on a daily basis anywhere from 20-40 apps, with over 100+ installed. As far as games, I currently have about 35 installed...

Oh and Dan, that will probably work. I have that effect on people.
 
I usually have 1-2 games installed I play now and then. Usually for a short while. And some ruins of other games I tried. Once every while I look at my start menu and am like "wtf, why is that still there" and press uninstall. In reality my computer is just a mess, just like my laptop, and my machine at work. Even my server gets raped via remote desktop, though quite a lot less.
 
desktop.JPG


My laptop, I don't really use browser tabs, and am too lazy to close windows. I open new browsers instead for random reasons. Oh, and while looking at all the icons to censor private information I notice many that I haven't used for over a year :)
For instance, ITsupportding (IT support thingy) was my own little tool at my previous job 1.5 years ago, I was part of the IT support department, thus the name)

And winkeys.txt = win keys.txt. I got confused too there for a bit.
 
Yep definitely a mess...my desktop is super organized haha.
 
My desktop has nothing but the Recycle bin and a shortcut to a snes emulator I am messing around with. I keep everything in my Start menu, which is super organized.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top