How to use more than 2GB memory on Windows XP?

How to make GiD use more than 2GB on Windows XP?



Two steps must be followed to achieve this: configure Windows so that it lets
a process use more than 2GB and enable the application to use more than 2GB.

Configuring MS Windows XP:

add the flag /3GB
to the Boot.ini
file. To do
this just open the Control panel
, click on the System

icon, on the Advanced options
panel, then press the
Configuration
button of the Start and recuperation

section. In this window click on the Edit
button inside the
System start
section and the Notepad
will pop-up with
the Boot.ini
file opened. In this file there should be a line like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)/WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

just add the /3GB flag at the end, like:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)/WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /3GB

Now the file must be saved, and MS Windows restarted

Enabling the application:

set the IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE
in the .exe
file
of the application. This can be accomplished in two ways:

linking the program with the flag /LARGEADDRESSAWARE
- go to the
Properties
of your MS VisualStudio 2003 application project
and look for
the Linker
section and the System
branch. In the combo-box
menu with label name Enable Large Addresses
select the entry Support
Addresses Larger Than 2Gigabytes (/LARGEADDRESSAWARE)
.

setting this bit directly in the executable - using the program editbin.exe
located in
C:/Program files/Microsoft Visual Studio .NET/Vc7/bin
like this:

c:/(...)/Vc7/bin> editbin.exe /LARGEADDRESSAWARE /Path/To/The/Program.exe

Afterwards this bit can be checked with the dumpbin.exe
utility:

c:/(...)/Vc7/bin> dumpbin.exe /headers /Path/To/The/Program.exe

Among other things a line like this one should appear:

Application can handle large (>2GB) addresses

Note 1:
The /3GB flag only works on MS Windows XP. Although MS Windows 2000 also accepts this flag,
it only lets the application use 2GB.

Note 2:
If a 32bit application with the bit IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE

set is run on MS Windows XP 64bits edition
, it can address 4GB
of
memory instead of 3GB.

Note 3:
Avoid signed comparisons with pointers, pointers casting to integers (instead of unsigned integers)
and hard-wired addresses.