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VW2009 Looky here! Wow!


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Well I have taken the plunge...I have purposefully reloaded Vista from scratch.

1. Loaded and updated Vista to SP3 along with all other software updates.

2. Loaded all my software that I use for day to day operations including VW09 with updates.

3. Then loaded AV software.

4. Started VW09...

I take back all that I have said. Don't get me wrong there's still some issues but VW09 is sprinting not running.

Next upgrade I'll be doing this procedure again I reckon.

Edited by j.christ
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Glad to hear this. I have XP. Has anyone installed 4 gig ram with XP and gotten XP to "see" the 4 gig and work properly with VW09? I was told by a ram sales person that XP can only "see" 3 gig, but then I found info (on the Microsoft web site) that seems to say the XP will "see" 4 gig.

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If you have a 32 bit OS (XP or Vista) it will only "see" a maximum of 3GB as addressable space regardless of installed memory.

This is often mis understood.

I don't know about XP, but certainly with Vista 32bit is that, due to 32 bit [address] architecture, 4GB is the maximum addressable RAM. Within this address space, part is shared by hardware and other features that take up RAM, see also below. So if you have a 256GB Video card, its going to take some of the 4GB.

When Vista came out, if you had 4GB RAM (as I have), it reported 4GB less the RAM that was unavailable. In my case, my 4GB was reported as 34??MB RAM. With SP1, 4GB is now reported as 4GB RAM, but the usable amount will still be (roughly) the same.

However, the OS needs some working space, so this is also taken out of the address space. So the address space was split between user (application) space and kernal (OS) space. I believe that historically, this user/kernal split was 2GB each - don't forget that due to virtual memory, the address space was still 4GB irrespective of the amount of RAM, the bits that being unable to fit into physical RAM was held virtually on disc. On some versions of Windows, (I believe) XP and Vista, the 2GB limit was relaxed, allowing user applications to address more than 2GB, but the application needed to be built to be aware of the larger addressing space - don't know if VW is built this was but you have to assume that it is. Also, my limited Windows development was in Windows 2000 and the application did not warrant large memory support so I cannot be sure, but vaguely I recall something about a Windows boot parameter needed to be specified increase the 2GB limit. It is possible that with XP and Vista that 3GB is the default Windows user address space.

But there is still a benefit in having more than 3GB physical RAM, as long as you realise that not all of it will be available and that the amount of RAM available to the application may not address more than 3GB - however, the OS will not be taking as much of its slice from the physical RAM. ie, if you have 3GB RAM, the application will have potential access to 3GB and the OS Kernel potential access to 1GB. If all the OS Kernel is in RAM, then in this case, the application will only have 2GB of its memory requirements in RAM. However, with 4GB RAM, it is likely that more physical RAM will be available to the application.

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I do believe that there is a 3rd party update available for XP to do this. Unsure where I have seen it, otherwise search the knowledge base at Microsofts site. You find your answer there.

I think as others had mentioned, the only "fix" is to upgrade to a 64bit OS, BUT, if a third party solution exists, I am all ears. I just can't seem to find one, so if you could provide a link, that'd be really cool!

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... I cannot be sure, but vaguely I recall something about a Windows boot parameter needed to be specified increase the 2GB limit. It is possible that with XP and Vista that 3GB is the default Windows user address space.

Having looked into this further, I believe that the switch that I was thinking about is referred to as the /3GB switch.

More information on this switch is available from Microsoft here.

It would appear that with Vista, 2GB is still the default max for application memory. But can be overridden. I found this article from Autodesk about how to enable the 3GB application limit on Vista. It is easier in XP and other OS'. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124810.aspx

However, this switch is useless if Vectorworks is not 3GB aware. This post by Dave Donley, that I just found, implies that 2009 is 3GB aware, but possibly 2008 is not.

I have however seen some posts indicating that some applications fail if /3GB is used so is possible used with some caution, especially if your graphics card uses a lot of memory since the top 1GB will be being shared between Windows kernel and memory mapped peripherals. Of course, you don't have to set application space to the full 3GB.

Hope this helps.

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