How do I know the userva switch is working? I decided to stay 32bit for now and have 6gb ram installed. It was my understanding that with the switch I would have 3gb avail for fsx and 1gb for the os. After setting the switch I saw no difference in the amount of ram in my system properties. It showed 2.99gb before and after the switch. If I look in the task manager the physical memory shows:

Total                 3136556
Available           2738120 ish (it flucuates)
System Cache   203700 ish

This is what my boot.ini looks like:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /3GB /Userva=2560


Thanks for the help

jwenham wrote on Jan 11^th, 2009 at 2:42am:


OK, back up

I think there is some cunfusion here. The cache edit does not set any amount of PM to be allowed by the system, it expands the address space of the OS so the PM amount above 2GB does not crash the OS when the system is trying to access it


The system will typically display 3.2GB depending on the size of the video card memory. But regardless, the system will use 4GB in total


Total            3136556

DO NOT SET higher than USERVA 2560

Raising that number does not allow any more or any less physical memory be used and the higher that value, the closer to a OOM Error the system gets