Enabling PAE

My school recently installed a version of 32bit win 7 enterprise on my machine. I had 8gb of ram, but now it only shows up as 2.71 usable. What can I do to speed up my system? I was thinking about enabling PAE but I don't think "BCDedit /set PAE forceenable" worked...

Thanks

 

32-bit is limited to 4GB of RAM. In order to take advantage of more than 4GB, you will need the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

Why in the world would they even do that? A 32-bit version of the Enterprise edition - of all editions - makes no sense to me.

 

What Prostar said, your problem is with 32-bit, get back to 64-bit if you want your RAM back. 32-bit windows is limited to a total of 4GB of memory addresses and that includes the VRAM as well. The RAM for the video card is addressed before the system RAM by the way so you end up with 4GB-VRAM usable RAM. Your IGP might be eating at some of that too. There is a hack that will allow you to use more RAM on 32-bit, but seriously, go back to 64-bit.

@Prostar, windows 7 32-bit still has legacy 16-bit support, 64-bit does not, that can be a reason for some to use the 32-bit version. Some older 32-bit program install discs might also use a 16-bit installer even if the program is 32-bit which can sometimes create a mess.

 

Thanks for that. Doesn't running in compatibility mode address this? Or XP mode (emulation)?

 

XP compatibility mode won't fix it as far as I know, emulation through a VM does work, I've been googling for XP mode and so far the answers on technet have been that no you can't, but a VM running XP can. There seems to be some way of using VMWare player with XP mode as well.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com.../thread/a4b43e3e-2c63-4b4d-9b52-46974c0b1f1d/
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...rs-under/64b42c08-dd90-424f-8dfc-adf8fc474351

In any case, it looks like it is a mess unless you have an XP license and run it in a VM, not the "pseudo VM" that XP Mode is.