[themadjester]

Can one disable hardware to increase the amount of addressable memory in windows?

by hardware I mean onboard sound cards, pci this and that.

The name of the thread explains the question. My guess is not because my limited knowledge suggests the bus "space" actually leads somewhere other than to the memory (to said hardware). However I could be wrong, and I would like to be wrong ;)

Edit: figured I should edit this before someone asks me what I mean by addressable memory in windows. What I mean is if I am using XP and have 4 GB phycical ram, windows will only be able to use like 2.5-3.5 of that. The rest is taken up by hardware... can it be freed from that hardware basically.

[themadjester]

bump for great... reply-age?

we take cash, debit and yes/no answers.

[Nepomuk]

Originally Posted by themadjester

Can one disable hardware to increase the amount of addressable memory in windows?

by hardware I mean onboard sound cards, pci this and that.

You can disable some hardware, as long as it's onboard - just enter the bios menu and there will be options to disable certain onboard features (at least with most newer motherboards). If that will increase the amount of addressable memory however, I have no idea.

Originally Posted by themadjester

What I mean is if I am using XP and have 4 GB phycical ram, windows will only be able to use like 2.5-3.5 of that. The rest is taken up by hardware... can it be freed from that hardware basically.

As far as I know, Windows XP (and Vista 32 Bit) can only use up to 3 GB of RAM in any case. So if you can only use 2,5 GB of RAM, that's not because 1,5 GB is used by the hardware, but simply because Windows isn't able to access it.

Greetings,
Nepomuk

[questionit]

Hi

You can Disbale the hardware from Control Panel easily.

Some Sound or Video cards although if not in use by the user runs thier applications in memory (they often start running on Windows Startup). you can stop them to run at Windows startup (goto the software options or use Msconfig.exe)

Qi

[KevinADC]

The amount of memory you gain by disabling onboard hardware will more than likely be neligible. Better to make sure no unecessary programs are running in the background if you need to squeeze more memory out of your system.