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XP Pro 32 bit -- only sees 2GB out of 8

kirkbross

kirkbross

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 6, 2007
666
22
Los Angeles
So I finally got XP running on a Raptor... it's strange that it only sees 1.99GB of the 8 in there. I know 32 bit XP (any 32 bit OS actually) can only address just under 4GB of RAM, but I'm wondering why XP on the Mac Pro only sees 2...

It's not a huge issue, but does anyone know why... or know of a fix (besides buying 64 bit Windows?
 
My friend bought my PC and runs XP pro 32-bit and for some reason he gets to see 3.25GB of ram with 4GB of ram in his machine, so I was looking forward to something similar with mine, but yeah.. ran into the same problem where it only showed "1.99GB".

I never did figure it out.. there is a switch or two (/3GB, /pae) for windows xp you're supposed to be able to put into the boot.ini file and get.. something (note.. don't mess with that file if you don't know what you're doing), but even with those switches I only saw 2GB.

I ended up just going with Vista Ultimate 64-bit. It works fine and shows everything.
 
kirkbross said:
So I finally got XP running on a Raptor... it's strange that it only sees 1.99GB of the 8 in there. I know 32 bit XP (any 32 bit OS actually) can only address just under 4GB of RAM, but I'm wondering why XP on the Mac Pro only sees 2...

It's not a huge issue, but does anyone know why... or know of a fix (besides buying 64 bit Windows?
Click to expand...

mines doing the same thing. nobody seems to know what the answer is. i'm thinking i might give applecare a call about it once i get my restart after sleep issue worked out.
 
My Mac Pro. just spits the XP Pro disk back out at me. You guys are lucky.
 
I believe it's related to the specific chipset in the Mac Pro, when I had mine it was the same way. Of course, I didn't need much more than that for what I was doing in Windows so I never really worried about it.
 
XP 32 bit cannot address more than 3GB of memory people...

That's why you need a 64bit version of the OS.
 
i had the same problem. I have 3GB butit's only reading as 2GB...
I gave up trying to work my way around and just got a 64bit xp.
I'm formatting it as I speak.
I have 2 more GB of RAM coming my way. It'll be here tomorrow~
I'll let you guys know if this worked out well for me or not. still at 50% of formmating
 
It's been a while since I looked at this problem on my XP PC, but from what I remember 32-bit versions of windows are limited to using 4GB of RAM TOTAL, which includes RAM on other bits of hardware (like your video cards), so if you're seeing less RAM reported in Windows than is actually installed - it may be due to this limitation.

You also may want to look up PAE - Physical Address Extension

HTH
 
I had similar issues when i gto a new PC at work - it had a quad core and 4 gigs of RAM.

XP 32 will not recognize more than 3 gigs or ram. not sure about the cores. not sure why it would recg. 3.5 gigs?

I am going to install XP 32 for gaming - unless I get weird memory errors (which i did running 32 bit xp with more than 2 gigs of ram), I will be content.

64 bit xp is lacking drivers in alot of areas - printers especially. But thats what i use on my PC at work.

Vista 64 seems to have more drivers available at this time - not sure what gmaes will run in 64 bit vista opposed to 64 bit XP.
 
crm114 said:
where did you get SP3? can you send a link or something?
Click to expand...
That's the correct link:

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 via Windows Update (released to the public by Microsoft on 2008.02.19)

Once you run that, you can download SP3 RC2 from Windows Update.

I think you might be getting confused on the "release candidate" terminology. Basically, this is like an extended public beta test before SP3 is released as SP3 GA ("general availability", which will just be called SP3) later this year.
 
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