Does 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium automatically support PAE?

Question

Does 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium automatically support PAE, for accessible RAM larger than 4GB? Or do I have to manually do some change?

Answer 1

No variant of 32-bit Windows 7 supports more than 4GB regardless, so whether or not PAE is enabled is irrelevant.

Answer 2

You can find the maximum amount of addressable memory, for all version of Microsoft Windows, including the Server editions, at this Wikipedia Web page: The most important part is the following table:

Windows Version [13] 32-bit editions 64-bit editions

Windows 2000 Professional, Server 4 GB N/A

Windows 2000 Advanced Server 8 GB N/A

Windows 2000 Datacenter 32 GB N/A

Windows XP Starter 512 MB N/A

Windows XP Home & Media Center 4 GB N/A

Windows XP Professional 4 GB 128 GB

Windows Server 2003 Web 2 GB N/A

Windows Server 2003 Small Business, Home, Storage 4 GB N/A

Windows Server 2003 Storage Server 4 GB N/A

Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition 4 GB 32 GB

Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (SP1) 4 GB 32 GB

Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (SP2) 4 GB 32 GB

Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (SP1) 16 GB with 4GT N/A

Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition 64 GB 1 TB

Windows Server 2003 Datacenter (SP1) 128 GB N/A

Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter (SP1) 128 GB 1 TB

Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter (SP2) 128 GB 2 TB

Windows Vista Starter 1 GB N/A

Windows Vista Home Basic 4 GB 8 GB

Windows Vista Home Premium 4 GB 16 GB

Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, Ultimate 4 GB 128 GB

Windows Server 2008 Standard, Web 4 GB 32 GB

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, Datacenter 64 GB 2 TB

Windows 7 Starter 2 GB N/A

Windows 7 Home Basic 4 GB 8 GB

Windows 7 Home Premium 4 GB 16 GB

Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate 4 GB 192 GB

Windows 8 4 GB 128 GB

Windows 8 Pro 4 GB 512 GB

From this you can see that, if you have a 32-bit Windows (not just Windows 7) it is always limited to 4GB, unless you are using a Windows Server Edition.