RAM Maximum increase...

[Andrew_368]

I have currently installed 8Gb of RAM in a ProLiant ML370 G3 Rack Server but during the startup it is announced that 4Gb is the max allowed on this system. I was wondering if there is an update that will allow me to use the additional 4Gb that I have installed?

[Basil Vizgin]

Offically ML370 G3 supports Up to 12,288-MB of memory.
You can try to update firmware:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/21978.html

But I didn't find anything about memory sizes in revision history.

[Andrew_368]

Thank you for your response Basil. I must be missing a setting or something then because during the boot it finds 8192 MB but when I look in the system properties after windows starts up it shows only 3,931,668 KB RAM. Maybe I am looking in the wrong places or completely out of my mind?!?!? Anyway, the error message didn't come up during the startup today but it did several times yesterday while I was redoing the RAID and installing W2K SP4 on it. Any ideas on what I might be missing here?

[Igor Karasik · Accepted solution]

Andrew,
If you see 8 Gb during POST check and only 4 Gb in Windows most likely you are missing
/PAE switch in boot.ini
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;283037
Note that windows 2000 standard edition can use 4 Gb RAM maximum, only advanced/datacenter editions of windows 2000 server can use more RAM.

Regards, Igor

[Basil Vizgin]

W2000 Server Standart did not see more than 4GB of memory.
More than 4GB supported by Advanced and Datacenter editions. But even this OS'es can't achieve full advantages of this amount of memory due to limitations of 32-bit computing.
Only 64-bit OSes (for example W2K3 x64-bit editions) on Xeons with EMT-64 or Opterons can achieve full benefits.
With W2000 Server Standart edition you even can't get full benefits of 4GB of memory... (/3GB switch is only available in Advanced Server)

[Thomas Bianco]

basil and igor have the right end of the stick, your bios supports up to 12Gb, but windows only supports intel physical addressing extensions (i.e. the /PAE switch) in the advanced server and datacenter editions.

if you ARE using one of the above editions, edit the boot.ini file and append the /PAE switch to your operating system entry (looks like below)

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 advanced server" /fastdetect /PAE /3GB

[Andrew_368]

Thank you for your help everyone. I am using Standard edition so will not be able to use all the RAM I have available. Its alright because I think that they will be upgrading to 2003 before too too long. Anyway, thanks again for the help...I really appreciate it!

[Thomas Bianco]

2003 standard suffers from the same memory restrictions

see :http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/features/compareeditions.mspx

[Andrew_368]

Thanks again for all your help guys. That sucks about the 2003 standard edition and I will have to try and convince the upper management here to upgrade or purchase an upgraded version of 2003. Anyway, thanks again and this is a very helpful site. I will definitely be speaking with you in the future!