XP, VMware and 4Gb memory

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NickFitz replied

22 September 2008, 13:41
Surprisingly enough, it's complicated.

This is a subject Raymond Chen from MS has addressed several times:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ar...14/699521.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ar...18/216492.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ar...05/208908.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ar...17/215682.aspx

... and more
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London75 replied

22 September 2008, 09:44
Yes and no.

To get full usage of 4GB upwards, you would do much better in installing Linux with the free VMWare server product on top and run XP as another of the VMs, you'd lose some (10% ish) performance in XP but over all, the Virtual Machines would probably work better.

Windows 32 bit can "see" 4GB but up to 500MB worth of addresses are used for the hardware in the computer so chances are you'll get about 3.5GB visible which you should be able to allocate to VMs, you also need to play with the /3GB and /PAE switches, not sure what would be best for a standalone laptop but google them and there's plenty of advice, gut feeling is you'd use both switches in your boot.ini if perservering with XP that is.

You don't need a particularly meaty computer either, I've been running for years with a few different laptops and a 1GHz CPU is adequate for 3 VMS working on the basis that really only one can be doing "CPU" stuff at a time, the one you're working in!

Disk is the real problem so I'd ignore CPU and graphics and go for one of the new laptops that has two disks. That will give you the single best performance increase of any of the components.
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birdy-numnum started a topic XP, VMware and 4Gb memory

22 September 2008, 09:21
XP, VMware and 4Gb memory

I'm considering buying a laptop running XP as a host O/S. I'm after a fairly high spec as I'll be running Virtual Machines using VMWare. I've got my eye on a Thinkpad, possibly a T61p, or an HP 6910p.

However, my question is about memory usage in VMWare.

XP can only see 3Gb I'm told. However, I've heard that VMWare can 'see' the full 4Gb. Does anyone know if this is correct? Can I run the host o/s with 1Gb and two VM's with 1.5Gb each using VMWare?
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