Vista SP1 RC through Windows Update!

I just installed it on my vista, vista works the same but i could get it installed on the second try .on the first try it took one and half hours to install it when the install is finished update failed screen poped up said "update failed reventing changes" (I first thought it was a joke)and of course i waited one hour more. i realised that sp1 doesnt support ultimate language packs when i uninstalled all my language packs it installed perfectly. i havent recognised any major difference. Dreamscene used to appear on windows update even when there was nothing to update that disappeared . Do you know if there are any updates since SP1 RC V.668 because WU havent found any since the sp1 installation???

You will also get a count down to activation if you haven't activated your copy yet.

After going back to Mac and making my PC strictly a gamer, I installed 32-bit for maximum gaming compatibility. After installing SP1RC, I saw something very interesting for all the 32-bit users out there...



4G on 32-bit!

I thought that too... download the gadget that shows cpu/memory used (the one for dual/quad cores). Its still only 3.x gb. Also I believe task manager will only report 3.xgb too. Hence why I moved to 64 bit.

Looks like you are correct Silver...32-bit is still limited 3.5 (which of course is not an issue for most Vista users).

Yea I got my hopes up too. Pre-Sp1 it was report 3.3gb of ram, then post the full 4. Unforutunately due to the limitations of 32-bit OS's, I knew that wasn't the case

Ah, well. Glad we got that cleared up though.

Here's something I found that is interesting. It seems the limitation is related to implementation of the kernel, not just the fact that it is 32-bit. For instance, Leopard (OS X 10.5) uses both 32 and 64-bit libraries simultaneously. There is no need to be strictly one or the other. It seems that is the choice of Microsoft...

From "Inside Windows 2000," by David Solomon and Mark Russinovich.

All of the Intel x86 family processors since the Pentium Pro include a memory-mapping mode called Physical Address Extension (PAE). With the proper chipset, the PAE mode allows access to up to 64 GB of physical memory. When the x86 executes in PAE mode, the memory management unit (MMU) divides virtual addresses into four fields.

The MMU still implements page directories and page tables, but a third level, the page directory pointer table, exists above them. PAE mode can address more memory than the standard translation mode not because of the extra level of translation but because PDEs and PTEs are 64-bits wide rather than 32-bits. The system represents physical addresses internally with 24 bits, which gives the x86 the ability to support a maximum of 2^(24+12) bytes, or 64 GB, of memory.

As explained in Chapter 2 , there is a special version of the core kernel image (Ntoskrnl.exe) with support for PAE called Ntkrnlpa.exe. (The multiprocessor version is called Ntkrpamp.exe.) To select this PAE-enabled kernel, you must boot with the /PAE switch in Boot.ini.

This special version of the kernel image is installed on all Windows 2000 systems, even Windows 2000 Professional systems with small memory. The reason for this is to facilitate testing. Because the PAE kernel presents 64-bit addresses to device drivers and other system code, booting /PAE even on a small memory system allows a device driver developer to test parts of their drivers with large addresses. The other relevant Boot.ini switch is /NOLOWMEM, which discards memory below 4 GB and relocates device drivers above this range, thus guaranteeing that these drivers will be presented with physical addresses greater than 32 bits.

Only Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server are required to support more than 4 GB of physical memory. (See Table 2-2.) Using the AWE Win32 functions, 32bit user processes can allocate and control large amounts of physical memory on these systems.

PAE switch didn't do anything when I enabled it. I followed the instructions to the tee from MS's website. Still showed 3.3gb, no increase in benchmark scored. 64-bit + 4gb FTW

The article makes it sound like you need a special kernel for PAE support. My guess is that if the 32-bit versions ship with the special kernel, they are not using it by default.

Thanks for post, yesterday i update to SP1 RC x64 and its works very fine.