Understanding Windows - Low On Registry Space

[freakedenough]

It is actually irrelevant whether the installation comes from VirtualBox; it could just as well come from any other PC (e.g. a hardware change without reinstalling). This issue with a full SYSTEM registry can also be caused by a simple Motherboard + CPU + GPU change.

What is to be solved: why is a ridiculous size of 8 MB for SYSTEM the limit? I now found this old KB article: https://ftp.zx.net.nz/pub/archive/ftp.microsoft.com/MISC/KB/en-us/292/726.HTM
 

Quote

In Windows Server 2003 and in Windows XP, there is no longer a limit to the registry based on paged pool. Views of the registry files are now mapped in the computer cache address space. Therefore, regardless of the size of the hive, it is not charged for more than 4 megabytes (MB) of space.

Note On Windows Server 2003, there is a limitation for the system hive to 12 MB when we use the /3GB switch.

For more information about memory mapped files, see the following Microsoft Web site:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/msdn_manamemo.htm

This is again not really giving a clear answer, why I am capped at 8MB.

Edited March 9 by freakedenough