XP with 16 GB RAM

[Asp]

I'm currently running XP 32 bits on a PC with 4GB RAM.

Planning to upgrade the RAM, to eventually run Linux and XP in emulation.

But in the meantime, if I just plug in the new RAM, will XP run with 16GB installed? Happy if it just sees 4 and ignores the rest.

(Haven't bought the RAM yet, or would just suck it and see.)

[Tommy]

XP should just ignore the extra amount of RAM in your system. It's not like Windows 9x. I run 32GBs of RAM in my main system and I dual booted Windows 2000 and Windows 10. Windows 2000 just displayed 4GBs while Windows 10 x64 displayed the full 32GBs. Never had an issue until Windows 2000 corrupted itself and I never bothered repairing the installation because I barely used it anymore as it was.

[Asp]

Thanks, that's reassuring.

[tekkaman]

Or you could use XP 64 and use all the ram. XP 64 is a really good OS. Rock stable and fast.

[Tommy]

Windows XP 64-bit definitely supports more than 4GBs of RAM, but you can also have issues with finding certain drivers depending on what hardware you have. The problem with Windows XP 64-bit is that it was never widely accepted as much as the 32-bit edition so you may run into issues with certain programs as well. You're also limited to Office 2007 as the highest version of Office you can use as Office 2010 will not install on Windows XP 64-bit because it requires Service Pack 3 and 64-bit's latest Service Pack is Service Pack 2, and I haven't been able to find a workaround for it yet. Not that it's a huge deal to some people but it's just things to be mindful of that there are tradeoffs in both versions.

[j7n]

Try upgrading to Server 2003 to see all available RAM. But if it doesn't work, you do need to provide the /MAXMEM switch in boot.ini to limit available memory again. It will likely work with drivers of common onboard devices, but not work with a Creative Labs sound card, and other rare or old expansion boards.

[mina7601]

3 hours ago, Tommy said:

and I haven't been able to find a workaround for it yet.

There's a workaround for it here: https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36649

[tekkaman]

23 hours ago, Tommy said:

Windows XP 64-bit definitely supports more than 4GBs of RAM, but you can also have issues with finding certain drivers depending on what hardware you have. The problem with Windows XP 64-bit is that it was never widely accepted as much as the 32-bit edition so you may run into issues with certain programs as well. You're also limited to Office 2007 as the highest version of Office you can use as Office 2010 will not install on Windows XP 64-bit because it requires Service Pack 3 and 64-bit's latest Service Pack is Service Pack 2, and I haven't been able to find a workaround for it yet. Not that it's a huge deal to some people but it's just things to be mindful of that there are tradeoffs in both versions.

Office 2010 installs fine on XP 64 if you use compatibility mode to XP 32 bit. Works fine too. I'm pretty sure most people that want to use XP know they can't use the latest software. Software compatibility is same as XP 32 bit except it can't run 16-bit software. It has been my main OS since 2017. I use it to play compatible games like the first 3 Batman Arkham games, watch blurays and youtube. Of course Office 2010 or OpenOffice works fine so you can do some work on it.  In case of hardware with printers you're out of luck. But many motherboards up to 2014 had XP 64 bit drivers. My Gigabyte motherboard from 2014 had all the drivers for it. 

Edited December 28, 2022 by tekkaman

[RainyShadow]

On 12/27/2022 at 7:11 AM, Asp said:

But in the meantime, if I just plug in the new RAM, will XP run with 16GB installed? Happy if it just sees 4 and ignores the rest.

It should just ignore the extra ram. 

If it somehow gets confused and refuse to work, you can try a trick i used to boot Win98 without bothering to remove RAM sticks or patch system files: 

Start GRUB4DOS (may also be possible with GRUB2 and/or ISOLINUX) and load a few big ISO files in memory as virtual drives - just enough to occupy all the extra RAM. Then chainload NTLDR and start Windows without rebooting. 

If that works fine, you can prepare a big empty ISO file, compress it as GZip (7-Zip supports this), and use it to fill the memory. GRUB4DOS supports loading files compressed like this, and in the case of an empty file it greatly reduces the disk transfer time.

[jbclem]

I'm interested in trying WinXP 64 because I usually have a lot of tabs open in my browsers...and am hoping the extra ram would keep the browser from getting bogged down.  Since the bogging down (slowing and sometimes locking up) seems to be caused by memory leaks (MyPal68 and Centaury are especially prone to this), all the extra ram should make a difference. 

Has anyone found this to be true when running WinXP 64?

 

[tekkaman]

Well I have used mostly roytam browser builds. From what I have seen, browsing works fine on Newmoon/Serpent. I get no slowdowns. But Youtube is slower for some reason. Iceape works faster for me on Youtube. There are others that say those 360 chrome browsers are much better. I didn't have to try it yet because the sites I visit usually work fine on Serpent. Even my bank website works fine. I have also tried Mypal68 and it works great.

[j7n]

In Roytam's Serpent you can activate the multi-process mode. Then it can divide the memory among multiple processes on a 32-bit PAE platform, where each one doesn't approach the limit. Plus you get some increase of stability and responsiveness.

[Asp]

On 12/29/2022 at 3:48 AM, tekkaman said:

Software compatibility is same as XP 32 bit except it can't run 16-bit software.

16 bit software is a main reason I've stuck with XP 32. But there is other software I want to run that needs a more recent OS.

So upgrading the RAM (and bigger SSD) as the first step to exploring ways to do both.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Asp

[tekkaman]

There's a tutorial that allegedly lets you run 16-bit apps on 64- bit. I don't know if it works but there are some comments below that say it does.

 

[Asp]

9 hours ago, tekkaman said:

There's a tutorial that allegedly lets you run 16-bit apps on 64- bit. I don't know if it works but there are some comments below that say it does.

 

That's for "WineVDM" aka "otvdm". There is info about that and other "Emulators and compatibility layers for old software" here: http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/emulators.html

I've found other useful utilities for running old software on this guy's pages. (https://mendelson.org/edwardmendelson.html)