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/Maxmem limitations?

I have 4GB of ram installed in my system (win xp pro 64 bit). Could there be any problems with limiting the memory to 4095 instead of 4096 using the /Maxmem switch?

or is it fine it'll just not use the last 1mb of memory?

Thanks

pzozulka

Have you looked at these?

The Windows boot.ini file has a /MAXMEM switch whose name would lead you to believe that it sets the maximum amount of memory that Windows will use. But that's not what it does; the name is misleading.

What the /MAXMEM flag really does is set the maximum physical address that Windows will scan in search of RAM. If your physical memory map contains discontiguous chunks of RAM, such as the one at the 3.5GB boundary in the sample diagram I drew a few months ago, then the amount of RAM Windows finds will be less than the /MAXMEM value you specified. For example, if there were a gap between 128MB and 256MB (said gap used by some hardware device, say), then setting /MAXMEM to 512MB would only give you 384MB of RAM. You lost 128MB of physical address space to the gap.
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2007/01/26/1537079.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791488.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/108393

Im-no-expert

ASKER

So the worst case scenario is windows is unable to use a few MBs of ram?

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pzozulka

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Im-no-expert

ASKER

Well it seems to work fine?

Thanks

for the comments.