PAE on Vista v86...

[imported_Septimus]

So is my understanding of PAE incorrect? I thought you could address 4 gigs of memory with it turned on -- I activated it in Vista using the bcedit utility but still no dice.

 

[stash]

All x86 versions of Vista are limited to 4GB of RAM, there is no workaround. This was a limit put into the OS intentionally (for better or worse).

 

[stash]

Sorry, misread the OP. What is probably happening is that you don't have a chipset that can fully address 4GB of RAM. Most chipsets these days use a chunk of that RAM for things like PCI-E, etc.

 

[imported_Septimus]

Yeah, I heard that -- but I have 4 gigs exactly. It seems like PAE should at least let me access all 4.

Vista shows up with 3.5 recognized, though BIOS has all 4.

 

[imported_Septimus]

The board is a P5N-E SLI (650i). Specs say it supports up to 8 gigs.

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah, I heard that -- but I have 4 gigs exactly. It seems like PAE should at least let me access all 4.

PAE will but Windows XP Pro, Vista, etc won't. The Windows client OSes are designed to ignore any memory address >4G so when you put 4G of memory in your machine you either lose a chunk of that memory or the ability to use the devices in your machine.