Retro PC question.

[F9thRet]

Long story short, throwing together an old XP machine, and everything looks good. But for the life of me, I can not remember how in the world to add the old /3GB switch to the boot.ini .

any of you old timers out there remember the process?

Thanks ahead of time guys.

Stephen

[Databyter]

I read this somewhere when I looked for an answer to remind myself.

The /3GB switch is supported only on the following operating systems:

Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition

However the above is not necessarily true for all applications and tweaking.

As you can see by the below instructions

Enable the 3GB switch on Windows XP

Right-click My Computer. Click Properties.
In the System Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
On the Advanced tab, under Startup and Recovery, click Settings.
In the Startup and Recovery dialog box, under System startup, click Edit. The Windows boot.ini file will be opened in Microsoft® Notepad.
Create a backup copy of the boot.ini file. Note: Boot.ini files may vary from computer to computer.
Select the following line in the boot.ini file:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Press Ctrl+C to copy the line and then press Ctrl+V to paste it immediately below the original line.
Note: Your text string may be different from the text string in this solution, so be sure to copy the text string from your boot.ini file, and not the text string included here.
Modify the copied line to include “ /3GB”, as shown in the following example:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional 3GB" /3GB /fastdetect

Note: Do not overwrite any existing lines.

Save and close the boot.ini file.
Click OK to close each dialog box.
Restart your computer.
During startup, select the 3GB option. If you do not select the 3GB option, the system will default to the 2GB total memory setting.
Note: If problems occur during startup, you may need to update some of your drivers.

Keep in mind;

Advanced users may know that the virtual address space of processes and applications is still limited to 2 GB unless the /3GB switch is used in the Boot.ini file. When the physical RAM in the system exceeds 16 GB and the /3GB switch is used, the operating system will ignore the additional RAM until the /3GB switch is removed. This is because of the increased size of the kernel required to support more Page Table Entries.

Note: Only applications that use IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE in the process header can take advantage of this functionality.

Hope this helps, all I really did was a google search and browsed a few articles, which you might want to do as well.

But I am sure the XP instructions are what you were looking for.

[F9thRet]

That's exactly it Data, and thanks. I tried to do the google thing earlier, but being on a satellite connection , well on the ISP end, it is having some trouble with some DNS's, Google being one of them.

Once again, my thanks old friend. Reading it, it is now coming back to me big time. I owe ya one buddy.

Stephen

[F9thRet]

Ooh, I just got to thinking, I wonder if I used CFF explorer, if i could change the older programs to the Large File Aware...

Nah, stop it Stephen, your making this for a grand kid, keep it simple.

Stephen

[LouC]

Ooh, I just got to thinking, I wonder if I used CFF explorer, if i could change the older programs to the Large File Aware...

Nah, stop it Stephen, your making this for a grand kid, keep it simple.

Stephen

Insert Tim Allen "more power" followed by ape like grunts of approval....

[F9thRet]

ROFL, you know me too well Lou.

Stephen

[MR. MISTER]

Long story short, throwing together an old XP machine......

"Retro"? ..... I thought you were going to be asking about A Commodore 64 or Timex Sinclaire.

[therightside]

"Retro"? ..... I thought you were going to be asking about A Commodore 64 or Timex Sinclaire.

How dare you not mention the awesome TRS-80?

[aep1974]

"Retro"? ..... I thought you were going to be asking about A Commodore 64 or Timex Sinclaire.

I know, right? I thought the same thing. My employer uses XP because our IT area will not go within 100 feet of Vista.

[Databyter]

Ooh, I just got to thinking, I wonder if I used CFF explorer, if i could change the older programs to the Large File Aware...

Nah, stop it Stephen, your making this for a grand kid, keep it simple.

Stephen

Lol, good call then.

Keep it simple

[F9thRet]

Heh, no doubt Data. I am going to have to do surgery on an old Westinghouse monitor. Damn cheap capacitors. I just hope my eyes can hold up to soldering that one last thing.

@ Mr. Mister (and others), Brother, I still have not only the C-64, I have aC-128 with 1571 Disk Drives, an old Odyssey II, and a storage shed full of old 286 and 386 MBs.

Now If this had been 35 years ago, I'd be sitting pretty.

I remember working on those C-64 machines, and 99% of the time, it was always the Video chip that went out. an easy replace itself, but getting to it, required removing the keyboard, then the MB, a lot of cursing, and an act of God.

But man, what a great little machine.

Stephen

[DavidC]

How dare you not mention the awesome TRS-80?

The Atari 800 was the best of the pack.