Hi All I was hoping someone could clarify something about PAE and extra memory on Windows 2003 x32 servers. At the moment, we have applications running that eat up memory. They run on virtual servers with 4GB RAM. Would I be correct in thinking that with the PAE switch, we can technically give the apps more memory than 4GB (providing the application is PAE compatible)? Or is this not advised? [at the moment, upgrading to x64 is on the horizon, but not yet]

The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is 4 GB. However, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition supports 32 GB of physical RAM and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition supports 64 GB of physical RAM using the PAE feature (and 128GB using SP1). You might also consider using the /3GB switch, as this limits the kernel memory space to 1 GB and thus allows more memory to be used by the application. However, make sure to make backups before and test the system stability after applying the switches! http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/pae/paedrv.mspx MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP

Have you seen these KB articles? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283037/en-us http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291988 Santhosh Sivarajan | MCTS, MCSE (W2K3/W2K/NT4), MCSA (W2K3/W2K/MSG), CCNA, Network+ Houston, TX http://blogs.sivarajan.com/ http://publications.sivarajan.com/ This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.