4GB of RAM on Windows 7 32-bit

Question

Possible Duplicates:
Windows XP and RAM 3.5GB+
Is there way to enable 4 GB RAM in 32-bit Windows OS?

I installed 4GB of RAM on my Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (it used to have only 2GB).

But it says only 3GB usable, and I still often get a "Not enough memory" problem on Photoshop.

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Is there any way to make it utilise the full 4GB?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 28 '11 at 10:36

1

Quite simply, you can't use it, 32bit cannot access above 3gig due to limitations of the 32bit addressing, only 64bit OS with a 64bit CPU can access above this.

answered Jan 28 '11 at 10:36

Trinitrotoluene

199

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 28 '11 at 11:24

1

You have a 64 bits CPU, why did you bough a 32 bit operating system ?

You need Windows 7 64 bits and you can use much more memory and it will run faster.

answered Jan 28 '11 at 11:24

Dragos

1,547

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 28 '11 at 10:37

0

Is there any way to make it utilise the full 4GB?

Install 64-bit Windows. In X86 Windows virtual address space for each 32-bit process limit 3Gb.

answered Jan 28 '11 at 10:37

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

0

See if PAE can help you:

How can I enable PAE on Windows 7 (32-bit) to support more than 3.5 GB of RAM?

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

Community

1

answered Jan 28 '11 at 10:43

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 28 '11 at 11:37

0

32bit use above 3gig due to limitation of 32bit addressing; only a 64 bit os can unless you run a server edition with PAE. Do you have a x64 CPU?

answered Jan 28 '11 at 11:37

Jacob

1,644

4GB of RAM on Windows 7 32-bit

5 Answers5