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Wish they'd backport it for XP, I am determined to get another year out of this machine.

Sadly it is not trivial to do. See Geoff Chappell's article: http://geoffchappell.com/notes/windows/license/memory.htm You'd be better off with Server 2003 Enterprise, which is also supported until July 2015 unlike XP.

XP actually has /PAE but apparently it doesn't work like this does per application, just extends 4GB once and that's it.

The Geoff Chappell article is great. Seems like he examined it in detail:

"The 32-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 all contain code for using physical memory above 4GB. Microsoft just doesn’t license you to use that code."

A huge pity he no longer blogs.

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