It seems that there is a lot of "myths" around the 32bit and 4gb+ memory addressing.
The facts are:
32 bit operating systems ARE able to use and address more than 4GB of ram. As mentioned before Enterprise software must be use (and I use the word Enterprise in order to describe Microsoft Windows OS - such as Microsoft Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition or Windows 2008 Enterprise Edition 32 bit which actually supports up to 64GB - yes 64gb! in 32 bit see here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...78(VS.85).aspx). However going over 4GB comes with a performance hit.
Also I can verify the above as I have setup some servers with 32bit Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition with 16GB of Ram and I’ve seen the usage on those gone as high as 12GB of physical memory used (Citrix servers with 150+ users per server).

So it is clear that ANY 32 bit Operating System is capable of supporting and using more than 4gb - including all the XP, Vista, 7 we use at home. Why hasn’t this feature been enabled? Nobody knows but rumours around tend to point to certain licensing costs on Microsoft in order to use this technology - costs which MS will recoup through the more expen$$ive OS-es.

Quote Originally Posted by hennyo View Post
Well, that is really simple, the issue only arises with addressed memory, not available memory. The same way you can stick 8 GB of ram into a computer running 32bit windows, it doesn't have an issue booting or anything like that, but it still can't address more memory than it is capable of.