Sweet! 😁 You should come up with a patch like this for XP!

Isn't this the same 'trick' windows 2003 uses?
Windows 2003 is based basically on XP

It's called "Physical Address Extensions", or "PAE", and has been around since Windows 2000 as a way to allow for more than 4 GB of RAM usage in a 32-bit OS. Obviously, it requires hardware support, which was first introduced with the Pentium Pro.

The "home" editions of the various OSes haven't had this, but the "Business"/"Professional" ones have.

Essentially, an individual process is still limited to 2 GB, but you can have more than 4 GB in use in total. The hard limit varies by OS/edition. Windows Server 2003 Datacenter can support 128 GB, while Windows Server 2003 Webserver can only support 2 GB!

What is odd is that Microsoft claims that Windows 7 Professional 32-bit only supports 4 GB.... msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx

I wonder if you're actually paging out a lot of that, and while Win7 will claim to have more than 4 GB on a >4GB system, it won't actually use the physical RAM, but will virtually allocate and use paging as necessary?

Another trick folks have used for 32-bit OS's is to convert some or all of that unused physical ram into a RAM Drive, move the paging file and temp folders over to it and use it for other things like this.

Ideally it's still best to have a 64-bit OS and to use the /largaddressaware switch for those 32-bit apps you want to utilize a full 4GB under a 64-bit OS.