Make Windows 7 and Vista 32-bit (x86) Support More Than 4GB Memory

If you didn’t know, there are 2 editions of Windows starting from XP which is the 32-bit and 64-bit. Sometimes a Windows 32-bit is referred as x86 and 64-bit as x64. I won’t go into details on what are the differences between x86 and x64 but one of the major differences is a 64-bit Windows can support more 4GB of ram. If your computer has 4GB of ram and you’re using a 32-bit of Windows, you’ll notice that only about 3.5GB is being recognized and the remaining 500MB of memory is gone. Weirdly Windows 2003 and 2008 can already address more than 4 GB of memory so why can’t we do that with Vista? The answer is: Microsoft doesn’t want that and it is all just a licensing matter.

We can of course go for 64-bit of Windows but honestly, there are still quite a lot of software which cannot run on x64, such as the recent Mamutu and Online Armor. Free licenses are given out to EVERYONE but unfortunately you can’t even get to try it because of your Windows 64-bit. Not only that, Windows 64-bit doesn’t accept unsigned drivers unless you disable driver signature enforcement manually every time you boot. How frustrating… Well here is a good news for Windows 7 and Vista users because I found patches to make your 32-bit Windows support more than 4GB of memory.
Before you download the memory limit patchers, please be informed that some antivirus detects it as a hacktool or backdoor. I’ve analyzed the files using ThreatExpert and they are absolutely safe.

Thanks to Remko, he has provided us with a dUP2 file for the patch according to Geoff Chappell’s article about Vista’s Memory Limit. You’ll need to compile the dUP2 file with diablo2oo2’s Universal Patcher to get the executable file. If you don’t know how to do it, I’ve compiled the dUP2 file provided by Remko and you can download from this link. Remko confirms that the patch works on both Windows Vista x86 Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2. You can either drop this file in Windows\System32\ folder and run it to patch the ntoskrnl.exe file or run it from anywhere and browse for the file.

As for Windows 7, you will need a different patcher and this time it’s from a Russian group called Staforce. Their group also came up with crack/activator for Windows 7. This patch works on Windows 7 (x86) Build 7600 RTM. The official link to download the 4GB memory limit patch is at this link but you’ll need to register for an account to see the download link. If you don’t want to register, I’ve uploaded the patcher here for your convenience. Other than patching Windows 7’s kernel to support more than 4GB memory, the installer also comes with a watermark remover. You can press the N key from your keyboard to disable the watermark remover.

To be honest, I did not get to test either of the patch above because both my desktop and laptop has only 2GB of memory. As for Windows XP to support more than 4GB of ram, I wasn’t able to find any patch for it. If you know any please leave a comment.

Easily Install All Versions of .NET Framework plus Hotfixes with AIO Runtimes

I don’t really like re-installing Windows because it’s boring and takes a long time to get everything back to normal. Installing Windows takes about 30 minutes, then looking for correct drivers takes another 30 minutes, downloading and installing latest third party software should take an hour and finally restoring emails and settings takes another 30 minutes. This is if everything goes smoothly without problems. There were a few times I ended up discovering even more problems during Windows reinstallation and had to get them fixed too.

Last weekend I went to a friend’s house to fix his HP desktop computer and needed to reinstall Windows because it was badly corrupted. Fortunately branded computers such as HP has recovery disc where I can just pop in the disc and the installation is all automated. I don’t even need to worry about looking for the correct drivers because the recovery disc has all that.

When the whole Windows restoration process has completed, there’s something else that we should install before the third party software and that is .NET Framework, Java, DirectX, Flash player, Silverlight, Shockwave player, and Visual C++ Runtimes.
These addons are important so that the user can able to run .NET Framework application, run Java applets, view websites with flash or shockwave and also better gaming performance with the latest DirectX. However, downloading and installing every version of .NET Framework, hotfixes and all the addons above would take you a lot of time.

Here’s an all in one package called All in One Runtimes which contains all versions of .NET Framework with their hotfixes, latest DirectX 9.0c, Adobe Flash Player 10, Microsoft Silverlight 3.0, Shockwave Player 11.5.0.596, Java Runtime Environment 6 and Visual C++ Runtimes. The good thing about this AiO pack is it can automate the process of installing all the addons without you doing anything.

There are 2 versions of All in One Runtimes. The first one is for 32-bit Windows which can be installed on Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003. As for the 64-bit version, the pack can be installed on Windows Vista and 7. With this All in One Runtimes pack, I no longer need to waste my time on downloading and installing runtimes. Of course this pack is not always useful since we can use nlite/vlite to integrate them into the Windows installers but it would definitely save us a lot of time and trouble when we’re faced with a computer with a recovery disc.

[ Download All in One Runtimes for 32-bit | 64-bit ]