Two Minute Drill: Find /3GB without using boot.ini

re: Two Minute Drill: Find /3GB without using boot.ini

maweeras — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:38:21 GMT

You can also use WMI as follows.

wmic /node:<insert_server_name> OS get MaxProcessMemorySize

if the value is larger than 2097024 (KB), then user mode processes get more than 2GB. I.e. /3GB is in use.

re: Two Minute Drill: Find /3GB without using boot.ini

Anthony Cohn — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:42:48 GMT

Hi,

I think you may have a typo above where you say "memory range on a 32-bit system ranged from 0x80000000 to 0xFFFFFFFF on a system without /3GB and 0xC0000000 to 0xFFFFFFFF on a system with /3GB enabled" shouldn't that be 0xBFFFFFFF without /3GB?

Anthony

re: Two Minute Drill: Find /3GB without using boot.ini

Gis Bun — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:06:36 GMT

I'm still a bit confused overall in using the /3GB switch. If I have Win XP SP2 with 4 GB of RAM, my system only shows 3 GB in Windows, by using the /3GB will it help me in any way? I tried it once and I still have 3 GB available.

re: Two Minute Drill: Find /3GB without using boot.ini

timothyn — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:57:55 GMT

Actually Gis, /3GB will have no effect on the amount of memory being shown by Windows. The reason for the descrepency is totally different. See my previous blog post "Dude, where's my RAM?" for more info:

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/04/13/memory-management-dude-where-s-my-ram.aspx

re: Two Minute Drill: Find /3GB without using boot.ini

Gis Bun — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:39:58 GMT

Tomothy. I guess that's why Dell, HP and others sell 3GB systems instead of 4. But if I ever go 64-bit I'll have the advantage then. Someone else [not here] said, my mobo series doesn't like mixing memory sizes [i.e. 2 X 1GB and 2 X 0.5GB modules].