2 Gig RAM Limit

Fred Horvat · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 69

I remember reading a while back about a RAM limit of 2 Gig for VPC but I
thought 7.01 patch fixed this. Today I upgraded my G5 from 1.5 Gig of RAM
to 3.5 Gig. I went into VPC afterwards to bump up my memory settings for
some of my Virtual machines and noticed that the maximum I can set them to
is 512 Meg and no higher. So I increased my XP Pro environment to 512 Meg
and booted. Once booted to the desktop I did a VPC Properties and it said
that my machine was running OSX 10.4.9 which I am actually running 10.4.11
and that my total system RAM was 2 Gig.

Like I stated above I remember hearing about a RAM limit initially when VPC
7 came out but I thought it was taken care of. Only 512 Meg is not a show
stopper but I do have plenty more RAM available to VPC. Anybody know more
of what's going on than what I just found out?

Archived from group: microsoft>public>mac>virtualpc

Paul Power · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 41

On Jan 16, 9:52 pm, Fred Horvat wrote:
> I remember reading a while back about a RAM limit of 2 Gig for VPC but I
> thought 7.01 patch fixed this. Today I upgraded my G5 from 1.5 Gig of RAM
> to 3.5 Gig. I went into VPC afterwards to bump up my memory settings for
> some of my Virtual machines and noticed that the maximum I can set them to
> is 512 Meg and no higher. So I increased my XP Pro environment to 512 Meg
> and booted. Once booted to the desktop I did a VPC Properties and it said
> that my machine was running OSX 10.4.9 which I am actually running 10.4.11
> and that my total system RAM was 2 Gig.
>
> Like I stated above I remember hearing about a RAM limit initially when VPC
> 7 came out but I thought it was taken care of. Only 512 Meg is not a show
> stopper but I do have plenty more RAM available to VPC. Anybody know more
> of what's going on than what I just found out?

The 2 GB RAM limit that you read about was for Windows NT Workstation
4.0

VPC never had any more than 512MB. A word of advice.....do not set
your RAM to the max of 512MB. It will actually slow the performace of
your virtual machine. Optimal performance levels can be achieved by
using the formula: 50% of actual physical RAM to a maximum of 384MB.

The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
required files.

Colin Barnhorst · Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 210

I thought the 2GB limit for NT was the size of the hard drive partition, not
memory.

"Paul Power" wrote in message @s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
On Jan 16, 9:52 pm, Fred Horvat wrote:
> I remember reading a while back about a RAM limit of 2 Gig for VPC but I
> thought 7.01 patch fixed this. Today I upgraded my G5 from 1.5 Gig of RAM
> to 3.5 Gig. I went into VPC afterwards to bump up my memory settings for
> some of my Virtual machines and noticed that the maximum I can set them to
> is 512 Meg and no higher. So I increased my XP Pro environment to 512 Meg
> and booted. Once booted to the desktop I did a VPC Properties and it said
> that my machine was running OSX 10.4.9 which I am actually running 10.4.11
> and that my total system RAM was 2 Gig.
>
> Like I stated above I remember hearing about a RAM limit initially when
> VPC
> 7 came out but I thought it was taken care of. Only 512 Meg is not a show
> stopper but I do have plenty more RAM available to VPC. Anybody know more
> of what's going on than what I just found out?

The 2 GB RAM limit that you read about was for Windows NT Workstation
4.0

VPC never had any more than 512MB. A word of advice.....do not set
your RAM to the max of 512MB. It will actually slow the performace of
your virtual machine. Optimal performance levels can be achieved by
using the formula: 50% of actual physical RAM to a maximum of 384MB.

The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
required files.

Steve Jain · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 835

There were problems a while back with G5's with 2GB or more installed
with VPC 7.0.

7.0.1 fixed it

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:44:20 -0700, "Colin Barnhorst"
wrote:

>I thought the 2GB limit for NT was the size of the hard drive partition, not
>memory.
>
>"Paul Power" wrote in message
>@s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
>On Jan 16, 9:52 pm, Fred Horvat wrote:
>> I remember reading a while back about a RAM limit of 2 Gig for VPC but I
>> thought 7.01 patch fixed this. Today I upgraded my G5 from 1.5 Gig of RAM
>> to 3.5 Gig. I went into VPC afterwards to bump up my memory settings for
>> some of my Virtual machines and noticed that the maximum I can set them to
>> is 512 Meg and no higher. So I increased my XP Pro environment to 512 Meg
>> and booted. Once booted to the desktop I did a VPC Properties and it said
>> that my machine was running OSX 10.4.9 which I am actually running 10.4.11
>> and that my total system RAM was 2 Gig.
>>
>> Like I stated above I remember hearing about a RAM limit initially when
>> VPC
>> 7 came out but I thought it was taken care of. Only 512 Meg is not a show
>> stopper but I do have plenty more RAM available to VPC. Anybody know more
>> of what's going on than what I just found out?
>
>
>The 2 GB RAM limit that you read about was for Windows NT Workstation
>4.0
>
>VPC never had any more than 512MB. A word of advice.....do not set
>your RAM to the max of 512MB. It will actually slow the performace of
>your virtual machine. Optimal performance levels can be achieved by
>using the formula: 50% of actual physical RAM to a maximum of 384MB.
>
>The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
>mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
>required files.

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/
I do not work for Microsoft.

Steve Jain · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 835

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:07:47 -0500, Fred Horvat
wrote:

>I follow you on the 512Meg limit but not the 2 Gig limit.
>
>> The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
>> mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
>> required files.
>
>I have a total of 3.5 Gig of real RAM. So the 2Gig limit is imposed by VPC
>then?
>

There was a bug with VPC 7.00, if you had more than 2GB. It was fixed
in 7.0.1

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/
I do not work for Microsoft.

Colin Barnhorst · Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 210

I recall having to limit the partition I was installing NT4 on to 2GB.
That's why I mentioned it. I understand FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS quite well.

"Fred Horvat" wrote in message %fmh@copper.net...
> Well yes there is a 2 gig limit on any hard drive formatted as FAT16 (DOS)
> whether it is in DOS, NT, 95, or 98. But if you format it as NTFS The
> limit
> is much higher.
>
>
> On 1/22/08 4:44 PM, in article O7iC1$TXIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl,
> "Colin
> Barnhorst" wrote:
>
>> I thought the 2GB limit for NT was the size of the hard drive partition,
>> not
>> memory.
>>
>> "Paul Power" wrote in message
>> @s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
>> On Jan 16, 9:52 pm, Fred Horvat wrote:
>>> I remember reading a while back about a RAM limit of 2 Gig for VPC but I
>>> thought 7.01 patch fixed this. Today I upgraded my G5 from 1.5 Gig of
>>> RAM
>>> to 3.5 Gig. I went into VPC afterwards to bump up my memory settings for
>>> some of my Virtual machines and noticed that the maximum I can set them
>>> to
>>> is 512 Meg and no higher. So I increased my XP Pro environment to 512
>>> Meg
>>> and booted. Once booted to the desktop I did a VPC Properties and it
>>> said
>>> that my machine was running OSX 10.4.9 which I am actually running
>>> 10.4.11
>>> and that my total system RAM was 2 Gig.
>>>
>>> Like I stated above I remember hearing about a RAM limit initially when
>>> VPC
>>> 7 came out but I thought it was taken care of. Only 512 Meg is not a
>>> show
>>> stopper but I do have plenty more RAM available to VPC. Anybody know
>>> more
>>> of what's going on than what I just found out?
>>
>>
>> The 2 GB RAM limit that you read about was for Windows NT Workstation
>> 4.0
>>
>> VPC never had any more than 512MB. A word of advice.....do not set
>> your RAM to the max of 512MB. It will actually slow the performace of
>> your virtual machine. Optimal performance levels can be achieved by
>> using the formula: 50% of actual physical RAM to a maximum of 384MB.
>>
>> The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
>> mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
>> required files.
>>
>

Fred Horvat · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 69

I follow you on the 512Meg limit but not the 2 Gig limit.

> The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
> mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
> required files.

I have a total of 3.5 Gig of real RAM. So the 2Gig limit is imposed by VPC
then?

On 1/22/08 2:30 PM, in article
1f99385d-0411-4475-b00a-f40bcaa2bd4f@s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com, "Paul
Power" wrote:

> On Jan 16, 9:52 pm, Fred Horvat wrote:
>> I remember reading a while back about a RAM limit of 2 Gig for VPC but I
>> thought 7.01 patch fixed this. Today I upgraded my G5 from 1.5 Gig of RAM
>> to 3.5 Gig. I went into VPC afterwards to bump up my memory settings for
>> some of my Virtual machines and noticed that the maximum I can set them to
>> is 512 Meg and no higher. So I increased my XP Pro environment to 512 Meg
>> and booted. Once booted to the desktop I did a VPC Properties and it said
>> that my machine was running OSX 10.4.9 which I am actually running 10.4.11
>> and that my total system RAM was 2 Gig.
>>
>> Like I stated above I remember hearing about a RAM limit initially when VPC
>> 7 came out but I thought it was taken care of. Only 512 Meg is not a show
>> stopper but I do have plenty more RAM available to VPC. Anybody know more
>> of what's going on than what I just found out?
>
>
> The 2 GB RAM limit that you read about was for Windows NT Workstation
> 4.0
>
> VPC never had any more than 512MB. A word of advice.....do not set
> your RAM to the max of 512MB. It will actually slow the performace of
> your virtual machine. Optimal performance levels can be achieved by
> using the formula: 50% of actual physical RAM to a maximum of 384MB.
>
> The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
> mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
> required files.

Fred Horvat · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 69

Well yes there is a 2 gig limit on any hard drive formatted as FAT16 (DOS)
whether it is in DOS, NT, 95, or 98. But if you format it as NTFS The limit
is much higher.

On 1/22/08 4:44 PM, in article O7iC1$TXIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl, "Colin
Barnhorst" wrote:

> I thought the 2GB limit for NT was the size of the hard drive partition, not
> memory.
>
> "Paul Power" wrote in message
> @s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 16, 9:52 pm, Fred Horvat wrote:
>> I remember reading a while back about a RAM limit of 2 Gig for VPC but I
>> thought 7.01 patch fixed this. Today I upgraded my G5 from 1.5 Gig of RAM
>> to 3.5 Gig. I went into VPC afterwards to bump up my memory settings for
>> some of my Virtual machines and noticed that the maximum I can set them to
>> is 512 Meg and no higher. So I increased my XP Pro environment to 512 Meg
>> and booted. Once booted to the desktop I did a VPC Properties and it said
>> that my machine was running OSX 10.4.9 which I am actually running 10.4.11
>> and that my total system RAM was 2 Gig.
>>
>> Like I stated above I remember hearing about a RAM limit initially when
>> VPC
>> 7 came out but I thought it was taken care of. Only 512 Meg is not a show
>> stopper but I do have plenty more RAM available to VPC. Anybody know more
>> of what's going on than what I just found out?
>
>
> The 2 GB RAM limit that you read about was for Windows NT Workstation
> 4.0
>
> VPC never had any more than 512MB. A word of advice.....do not set
> your RAM to the max of 512MB. It will actually slow the performace of
> your virtual machine. Optimal performance levels can be achieved by
> using the formula: 50% of actual physical RAM to a maximum of 384MB.
>
> The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
> mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
> required files.
>

Helpful Harry · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 324

In article
,
Paul Power wrote:

> The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
> mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
> required files.

"Virtual mamory"!? Is that something like silicon breast inserts?? ;o)

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

Steve Jain · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 835

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:28:40 -0500, Fred Horvat
wrote:

>That's what I thought in my original posting but it appears that I can run
>VPC with over 2 Gig but it only thinks I have 2 Gig and worse only allows me
>512Meg to a virtual machine.
>

There is a hard limit in VPC, the max you can assign to a VM is 512MB,
regardless of the host's RAM. The overhead of managing all that RAM
in an emulated environment causes a big performance hit.

VPC simply ignores more than 2GB, which resolves the >2GB problems
that occured in VPC 7.00
--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/
I do not work for Microsoft.

Fred Horvat · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 69

That's what I thought in my original posting but it appears that I can run
VPC with over 2 Gig but it only thinks I have 2 Gig and worse only allows me
512Meg to a virtual machine.

On 1/22/08 11:26 PM, in article d9gdp39nvlg8me804vd1rbdn0oo7gmeq1m@4ax.com,
"Steve Jain" wrote:

> There were problems a while back with G5's with 2GB or more installed
> with VPC 7.0.
>
> 7.0.1 fixed it
>
>
>
> On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:44:20 -0700, "Colin Barnhorst"
> wrote:
>
>> I thought the 2GB limit for NT was the size of the hard drive partition, not
>> memory.
>>
>> "Paul Power" wrote in message
>> @s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
>> On Jan 16, 9:52 pm, Fred Horvat wrote:
>>> I remember reading a while back about a RAM limit of 2 Gig for VPC but I
>>> thought 7.01 patch fixed this. Today I upgraded my G5 from 1.5 Gig of RAM
>>> to 3.5 Gig. I went into VPC afterwards to bump up my memory settings for
>>> some of my Virtual machines and noticed that the maximum I can set them to
>>> is 512 Meg and no higher. So I increased my XP Pro environment to 512 Meg
>>> and booted. Once booted to the desktop I did a VPC Properties and it said
>>> that my machine was running OSX 10.4.9 which I am actually running 10.4.11
>>> and that my total system RAM was 2 Gig.
>>>
>>> Like I stated above I remember hearing about a RAM limit initially when
>>> VPC
>>> 7 came out but I thought it was taken care of. Only 512 Meg is not a show
>>> stopper but I do have plenty more RAM available to VPC. Anybody know more
>>> of what's going on than what I just found out?
>>
>>
>> The 2 GB RAM limit that you read about was for Windows NT Workstation
>> 4.0
>>
>> VPC never had any more than 512MB. A word of advice.....do not set
>> your RAM to the max of 512MB. It will actually slow the performace of
>> your virtual machine. Optimal performance levels can be achieved by
>> using the formula: 50% of actual physical RAM to a maximum of 384MB.
>>
>> The 2GB reading that your system is reporting is total 'virtual
>> mamory', a combination of disk space and RAM for quick access to
>> required files.

Colin Barnhorst · Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 210

You might as well run Vista Home Basic now that MS has changed the EULA to
permit the home editions to be virtualized. You can load it by not entering
a PK. That will allow you to install the edition of your choice on the
30-day trial. There is workaround to extend even that. Some of the folks
in the Vista newsgroups can point you to the workaround if you don't already
know about it. I see little point in running the other editions given the
ram limit. A lot of their additional features won't work well or at all in
a VPC7 vm anyway even if you could up the ram.

"Fred Horvat" wrote in message %fmh@copper.net...
> XP runs fine with 512 and 98 and 2000 I run well under 512. The couple of
> Linux Distros I run I have under 512 and all run well. Only Vista I'd
> like
> to run over 512 but that's not possible so 512 will have to do.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> On 1/23/08 7:14 PM, in article eulfp3trdkg81t29hv3jqni18t595ff764@4ax.com,
> "Steve Jain" wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:28:40 -0500, Fred Horvat
>> wrote:
>>
>>> That's what I thought in my original posting but it appears that I can
>>> run
>>> VPC with over 2 Gig but it only thinks I have 2 Gig and worse only
>>> allows me
>>> 512Meg to a virtual machine.
>>>
>>
>> There is a hard limit in VPC, the max you can assign to a VM is 512MB,
>> regardless of the host's RAM. The overhead of managing all that RAM
>> in an emulated environment causes a big performance hit.
>>
>> VPC simply ignores more than 2GB, which resolves the >2GB problems
>> that occured in VPC 7.00
>

Fred Horvat · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 69

XP runs fine with 512 and 98 and 2000 I run well under 512. The couple of
Linux Distros I run I have under 512 and all run well. Only Vista I'd like
to run over 512 but that's not possible so 512 will have to do.

Thanks

On 1/23/08 7:14 PM, in article eulfp3trdkg81t29hv3jqni18t595ff764@4ax.com,
"Steve Jain" wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:28:40 -0500, Fred Horvat
> wrote:
>
>> That's what I thought in my original posting but it appears that I can run
>> VPC with over 2 Gig but it only thinks I have 2 Gig and worse only allows me
>> 512Meg to a virtual machine.
>>
>
> There is a hard limit in VPC, the max you can assign to a VM is 512MB,
> regardless of the host's RAM. The overhead of managing all that RAM
> in an emulated environment causes a big performance hit.
>
> VPC simply ignores more than 2GB, which resolves the >2GB problems
> that occured in VPC 7.00

Fred Horvat · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 69

I have Vista Business and have all the bells and whistles turned off. Speed
is on the slow side though. I use it for testing only and not day to day
type stuff.

On 1/24/08 4:54 PM, in article OHBJ9OtXIHA.4200@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl, "Colin
Barnhorst" wrote:

> You might as well run Vista Home Basic now that MS has changed the EULA to
> permit the home editions to be virtualized. You can load it by not entering
> a PK. That will allow you to install the edition of your choice on the
> 30-day trial. There is workaround to extend even that. Some of the folks
> in the Vista newsgroups can point you to the workaround if you don't already
> know about it. I see little point in running the other editions given the
> ram limit. A lot of their additional features won't work well or at all in
> a VPC7 vm anyway even if you could up the ram.
>
> "Fred Horvat" wrote in message
> %fmh@copper.net...
>> XP runs fine with 512 and 98 and 2000 I run well under 512. The couple of
>> Linux Distros I run I have under 512 and all run well. Only Vista I'd
>> like
>> to run over 512 but that's not possible so 512 will have to do.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>>
>> On 1/23/08 7:14 PM, in article eulfp3trdkg81t29hv3jqni18t595ff764@4ax.com,
>> "Steve Jain" wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:28:40 -0500, Fred Horvat
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> That's what I thought in my original posting but it appears that I can
>>>> run
>>>> VPC with over 2 Gig but it only thinks I have 2 Gig and worse only
>>>> allows me
>>>> 512Meg to a virtual machine.
>>>>
>>>
>>> There is a hard limit in VPC, the max you can assign to a VM is 512MB,
>>> regardless of the host's RAM. The overhead of managing all that RAM
>>> in an emulated environment causes a big performance hit.
>>>
>>> VPC simply ignores more than 2GB, which resolves the >2GB problems
>>> that occured in VPC 7.00
>>
>