How To Breach the Windows 4GB Barrier

Windows 7 is fast, really fast. As a matter of fact, I’m typing from a Win 7 rig right now. I got Adobe Photoshop and a whole host of other programs running in the background. There’s no hiccup whatsoever.  This is one major success that the Microsoft Engineers should be proud of.

It helps that I have 4GB installed in my system memory. The more programs I load, the more responsive the system gets with more memory installed. 2GB is the minimum I’d chuck into my lappie. In fact I have 4GB installed. But there’s a problem. Whether it’s Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, anything above 3GB will not be recognized and used by the system unless the platform is an x64 bit system.  Regular x32 systems cannot use more than 3GB. Because of this, I essentially wasted money on the extra 1GB

Or so I thought. I stumbled across a super solution that actually lets Windows 7 use that extra 1GB without having to upgrade my hardware to X64.

The secret is mind numbing. If you have 4GB or more RAM installed on your machine, but are stuck with a 32 Bit OS and system  you can make use of the portion of ram between 3GB and 4GB. All you have to do to use 4GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows, is with a unique Ramdisk software.

Download RamDisk PLUS 10,  then you can instantly claim the memory between 3.2GB and 4GB.  The objective is to create a RAM disk using the unmanaged memory in windows, then putting a portion (or all) of the virtual memory onto the ram disk giving your virtual memory RAM speeds!

Here’s the nitty gritty:

After RamDisk Plus 10 is installed, go to File –> Memory –> Unmanaged –> Configure
Check “Enable use of unmanaged memory”, click OK.
Decide the size of the Unmanaged Memory you are able to use.
Hit the “+” (Add) icon in the upper left of the screen, and create a RamDisk the size of the Unmanaged Memory.

From here, you then use your RamDisk as a page file. Go to Control Panel

Right click “My Computer” –> Properties –> Advanced
Click on “Settings” under Performance
Click on Advanced tab, click “change” under Virtual memory
Select your new RamDisk drive, and set initial size and maximum size to the size of your RamDisk.
One advantage RamDisk Plus overs over other products is automatic backup of RamDisk during shutdown and automatic loading during startup. This makes it easy to treat the RamDisk as a non-volatile disk.

I’ve tried running this set up with various heavyweight programs like Autocad 10 and Photoshop CS4 simultaneously. You wouldn’t imagine the blistering speeds I enjoyed!

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