Trying to get a call into M$ right now, to settle this matter, figures looks like the powers that be didn't update the support contract.. Sigh. Why do I put myself thought this nonsense.
Z ________________________________ From: Joe Heaton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 10:58 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: HP DL380 G5 and Win2k3 R2 Standard not showing maximum memory in OS Not meaning this towards you Ken, but that just seems like nonsense. Another reason not to like Microsoft. The literature on Server 2K3 Standard says you can use 4GB of RAM, and yet, they hard-coded a limit below that? Typical... Joe Heaton From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 6:06 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: HP DL380 G5 and Win2k3 R2 Standard not showing maximum memory in OS Nothing is going to change. You are running Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition x86. This has a built-in limitation (in the code) which prevents Windows using addresses beyond 0xFFFFFFFFF If you are using x86, put Enterprise Edition on there (with /PAE). Or put x64 Standard Edition on there. The limitation you are running into is hard coded into the OS. Cheers Ken From: Ziots, Edward [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, 9 January 2008 1:01 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: HP DL380 G5 and Win2k3 R2 Standard not showing maximum memory in OS Bingo, That is what I was looking for. I will follow up and try out the /PAE switch and see if anything changes. I take that my previous post with the boot.ini settings is the correct usage of the /PAE switch. Z ________________________________ From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 8:56 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: HP DL380 G5 and Win2k3 R2 Standard not showing maximum memory in OS Some says that it's because the BIOS reserves 512MB "physical" address space just below the 4GB line and put the real 512MB RAM above the line. Thus only the PAE kernel sees that 512MB RAM. This isn't a correct explanation of what you are seeing. The BIOS doesn't reserve "RAM". PCI (and PCI-X and PCIe) devices can reserve memory addresses. These overlap with addresses that the Windows OS uses. The BIOS has masked these addresses, making the unavailable to Windows to address the physical RAM. The use of the /PAE switch enables three layers of page tables to be used. If you are familiar with B-trees in databases, you'll be familiar with the concept of tables of tables of pages of memory (3 layers). Without PAE you only get tables of pages (two layers). The extra layer of tables makes available a whole set of addresses that wouldn't otherwise be available. These addresses can be used to address the physical RAM that Windows can't otherwise get to. Cheers Ken From: Ziots, Edward [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, 9 January 2008 12:41 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: HP DL380 G5 and Win2k3 R2 Standard not showing maximum memory in OS Ken, re: Myth: PAE increases the virtual address space beyond 4GB Wednesday, August 18, 2004 9:05 AM by timchen There is one thing quite interesting about /PAE. On some machines with 4GB RAM installed, Task Manager shows only 3.5GB physical memory. However, if you switch to the PAE kernel, all 4GB is shown. Some says that it's because the BIOS reserves 512MB "physical" address space just below the 4GB line and put the real 512MB RAM above the line. Thus only the PAE kernel sees that 512MB RAM. I'm not sure if the explanation is true or not, but the symptom is confirmed. EZ ________________________________ From: Ken Schaefer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 8:24 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: HP DL380 G5 and Win2k3 R2 Standard not showing maximum memory in OS There is no such limit using a 32bit Windows OS. What you observe is a practical average given modern hardware. But I have a HP ML330 in my house that "loses" about 64MB of memory when using standard Windows Server 2003 x86 edition, not ~600MB. Read the links and comments from: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/08/22/218527.aspx Or buy/read the Windows Internals book by Mark Russinovich/David Solomon Or read the articles on memory management here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/kernel/wmm.mspx (the memory management whitepaper is well worth reading) This seems to come up every Rnd() months on this list :-) Cheers Ken From: Jeffrey Showen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, 9 January 2008 12:14 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: HP DL380 G5 and Win2k3 R2 Standard not showing maximum memory in OS I thought a 32-bit OS was limited to 3.4GB of RAM unless you use the Physical Address Extensions in the boot.ini file. The file is a protected file in the root of C:\ (or whatever your boot partition is) so you will need to unhide protected OS files onder folder options. Open boot.ini with notepad and add the /pae switch to the end of the last line (starts with "multi(0) disk(0)rdisk"... etc) and then reboot. You should then be able to see all your memory. Cheers, Jeff No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: 1/7/2008 9:14 AM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: 1/7/2008 9:14 AM ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
