Windows 2000 pro and 4gb ram

[Nikitastepanov]

Windows 2000 pro only detects 3gb ram instead 4gb ram even with pae. How to fix it?

[i430VX]

It may be a limitation of your chipset. My ThinkPad T60 has a Chipset limitation of 3GB. I will never be able to use more.

[Goodmaneuver]

If 32 bit then 3GB is all the RAM it can use later 32 bit systems have reserved RAM for the last 1GB if 4GB is installed.

[win32]

Windows 2000 Advanced/Datacenter Server, as well as other versions with extended core, can address up to 64 GB of RAM using Physical Address Extension. It really helps if you want to use multiple VMs simultaneously. XP SP2 and up cripple PAE so that Data Execution Prevention can be used, but not large amounts of RAM.

That ~1 GB is reserved at the BIOS level, and it cuts into the available RAM because most consumer-grade 32bit OSes block the use of memory addresses above 4 GB. Non-crippled PAE pushes that area of reserved memory addresses above 4 GB.

Edited March 13, 2020 by win32

[ZaPbUzZ]

theres a little program out there called ntswitch it was used to turn xp into server versions and back (but also one would have to put a key in to suit)

That being said, perhaps the nt core of 2000 could be fooled or recoded to allow up to 64gb on the workstation version

[win32]

17 hours ago, ZaPbUzZ said:

That being said, perhaps the nt core of 2000 could be fooled or recoded to allow up to 64gb on the workstation version

Yes, blackwingcat's extended core patches Windows 2000 Professional and the lesser servers to see up to 64 GB of RAM.

[ZaPbUzZ]

hmmmm .... I was just thinking nobodys made a readyboost for 2000 yet and that'd get it up to 64gb ram in capacity in a jiffy

Where chipset has a maximum a timely tie in to the kernel to a usb2 thumb drive would push that boundary

Imagine a 64gb usb3 flash drive in usb2 mode and after a install routine and a reboot the system reports 64gb ram lol

but it would also have to exclude a portion of flash to stay in the 64gb boundary by taking system memory into account.

Edited March 15, 2020 by ZaPbUzZ

[Goodmaneuver]

There is no reserved RAM on 64 bit OS. A 32 bit integer has a maximum 4GB addressable range. Memory address includes an amount used in the video window for the graphics card. PAE extended the address range of the x86 processor and could access to 64GB. The OS can access the extended address but "PAE does not change the amount of virtual address space available to a process. Each process running in 32-bit Windows is still limited to a 4 GB virtual address space."  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/memory/physical-address-extension?redirectedfrom=MSDN. Perhaps a multi processor board would be different. Reporting is just that though, I have put 3GB of ECC SDRAM in a Pentium 4 machine and Vista Service Pack 1 reported 6GB. Windows 2000 Datacenter Server was based on Windows 2000 operating system and Service Pack 1.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Goodmaneuver