Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys

Since another device driver on the market is doing it, this is not a an acceptable answer to managment so perhaps undocumented techniques are the way forward.

Why is it so darn important to use that chunk of memory?

d

tiny phone keyboard + fat thumbs = you do the muth

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 6:02 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys

Since another device driver on the market is doing it, this is not a an acceptable answer to managment so perhaps undocumented techniques are the way forward.


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You wrote:

Since another device driver on the market is doing it, this is not a an
acceptable answer to managment so perhaps undocumented techniques are the
way forward.

The 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista are limited by licensing restrictions to using physical memory below the 4GB mark only. Even if it were possible to use that memory in Windows, it is not necessarily legal.

The actual size of the PCI hole depends on your BIOS, but is typically a few dozen megabytes. I guess it’s up to you to decide whether you want to risk a licensing violation over 25c worth of RAM, especially since people seem to be quickly migrating to 64-bit systems, where this restriction does not exist.

Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

Ok, so you would rather lie to management and lead them to believe that
undocumented techniques are the magic yellow brick road, to do something
that the Microsoft rep that monitors this list said you can’t? How forward
compatible will your “undocumented” techniques be for Win 7.1 or Win 8?
Undocumented techniques are undocumented for a reason — the code they are
based upon, may go away, without any warning, leaving you and all your
customers holding onto your pipe dream. Not a nice place to be in when all
you had to do was be truthful with mangement in the first place.

How do you know those undocumented techniques are the way to solve the
problem? Perhaps your competitor paid the bucks for the source to build
their code. If so, dude, you’re screwed, since “they” can go places you can
only guess at and hope someone “undocuments” the next branch on those rather
pissy colored bricks.

But, Doron had a question you need to answer — why is that memory so damn
important, and precisely WHAT are you trying to do? There just might be, oh
my god, DOCUMENTED, ways of doing it.

The personal opinion of
Gary G. Little

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 6:04 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys

Since another device driver on the market is doing it, this is not a an
acceptable answer to managment so perhaps undocumented techniques are the
way forward.


NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
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__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature
database 4947 (20100315) __________

The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

http://www.eset.com

__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature
database 4947 (20100315) __________

The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

http://www.eset.com

>

Ok, so you would rather lie to management and lead them to believe
that
undocumented techniques are the magic yellow brick road, to do
something
that the Microsoft rep that monitors this list said you can’t? How
forward
compatible will your “undocumented” techniques be for Win 7.1 or Win
8?
Undocumented techniques are undocumented for a reason — the code
they are
based upon, may go away, without any warning, leaving you and all your
customers holding onto your pipe dream. Not a nice place to be in when
all
you had to do was be truthful with mangement in the first place.

How do you know those undocumented techniques are the way to solve the
problem? Perhaps your competitor paid the bucks for the source to
build
their code. If so, dude, you’re screwed, since “they” can go places
you can
only guess at and hope someone “undocuments” the next branch on those
rather
pissy colored bricks.

Amen!

But, Doron had a question you need to answer — why is that memory so
damn
important, and precisely WHAT are you trying to do? There just might
be, oh
my god, DOCUMENTED, ways of doing it.

I think it’s a pretty simple matter of numbers. My laptop has 4GB of
memory installed, yet XP says that it only has 3GB. The top 1GB is
inaccessible because there is ‘stuff’ in the way, and presumably it has
been remapped above the 4GB mark (or it’s just not accessible). So on
the face of it, getting access to that extra 1GB could give you
effectively 33% more memory.

My recommendation to the OP is that if memory is so important to you, go
64 bit. Let your competition have the fun of milking the long tail of
the 32 bit XP market and go do something else.

James

There is the obvious solution which Microsoft will love. Just use Server
2008 x86 where the license restrictions don’t exist. Of course the memory
is still special in some ways, but there are documented ways to use it.

“Tim Roberts” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> You wrote:
>>
>>Since another device driver on the market is doing it, this is not a an
>>acceptable answer to managment so perhaps undocumented techniques are the
>>way forward.
>
> The 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista are limited by licensing
> restrictions to using physical memory below the 4GB mark only. Even if it
> were possible to use that memory in Windows, it is not necessarily legal.
>
> The actual size of the PCI hole depends on your BIOS, but is typically a
> few dozen megabytes. I guess it’s up to you to decide whether you want to
> risk a licensing violation over 25c worth of RAM, especially since people
> seem to be quickly migrating to 64-bit systems, where this restriction
> does not exist.
> –
> Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
> Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
>

Tim and David,

It is true that client versions of 32-bit Windows are restricted to 4GB of
physical address space. And you’re right, this does appeal to the folks at
Microsoft who want you to upgrade your OS, or use server OSes.

But the fundamental reason we chose to limit 32-bit client Windows to 32-bit
physical addresses was driver compatibility. There are just too many
drivers in the world that are either lying about their capabilities for
performance reasons or just skipping the DMA APIs entirely.

Server OSes don’t generally have this problem, as they tend to run mostly on
machines with device drivers that have been through a more rigorous
validation cycle, particularly in the presence of large amounts of RAM.


Jake Oshins
Hyper-V I/O Architect
Windows Kernel Group

This post implies no warranties and confers no rights.


“David Craig” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> There is the obvious solution which Microsoft will love. Just use Server
> 2008 x86 where the license restrictions don’t exist. Of course the memory
> is still special in some ways, but there are documented ways to use it.
>
>
> “Tim Roberts” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
>> You wrote:
>>>
>>>Since another device driver on the market is doing it, this is not a an
>>>acceptable answer to managment so perhaps undocumented techniques are the
>>>way forward.
>>
>> The 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista are limited by licensing
>> restrictions to using physical memory below the 4GB mark only. Even if
>> it were possible to use that memory in Windows, it is not necessarily
>> legal.
>>
>> The actual size of the PCI hole depends on your BIOS, but is typically a
>> few dozen megabytes. I guess it’s up to you to decide whether you want
>> to risk a licensing violation over 25c worth of RAM, especially since
>> people seem to be quickly migrating to 64-bit systems, where this
>> restriction does not exist.
>> –
>> Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
>> Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
>>
>

This is for a product similar to a ramdisk. The ability to utilize a gig of RAM that is sitting there unused is considered an important feature because it allow users to get a great deal more out of their system.

It’s not worth it. All OEMs are shipping PCs with mostly 64-bit Windows
installed. I’d say all 4GB systems are shipped with 64 bit OS.

wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> This is for a product similar to a ramdisk. The ability to utilize a gig
> of RAM that is sitting there unused is considered an important feature
> because it allow users to get a great deal more out of their system.
>
>

We do not have the luxury of only serving the OEM market. This is a retail product and there are substantial users who would purchase the product if it squeezes more out of their systems without upgrades. Getting this memory serves a sweet spot in todays market.

And what will you do if some other product tries this trick. I have
known of people who did this in highly controlled embedded environments,
but even then some of them ran into problems. You say this is ramdisk
like which means you a storing the users data, corruption should be your
first concern, and there is no way to protect against someone else
assuming the memory is available.

Don Burn (MVP, Windows DKD)
Windows Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/WinDrvr

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@gmail.com [mailto:xxxxx@gmail.com]
Posted At: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 9:50 AM
Posted To: ntdev
Conversation: Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys
Subject: RE: Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys

This is for a product similar to a ramdisk. The ability to utilize a
gig of RAM that is sitting there unused is considered an important
feature because it allow users to get a great deal more out of their
system.

__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
signature database 4949 (20100316) __________

The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

http://www.eset.com

Then be sure to let us know what the product is. I want to tell all my
clients to be sure to avoid this crap at all costs.

Don Burn (MVP, Windows DKD)
Windows Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/WinDrvr

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@gmail.com [mailto:xxxxx@gmail.com]
Posted At: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 10:48 AM
Posted To: ntdev
Conversation: Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys
Subject: RE: Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys

We do not have the luxury of only serving the OEM market. This is a
retail product and there are substantial users who would purchase the
product if it squeezes more out of their systems without upgrades.
Getting this memory serves a sweet spot in todays market.

__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
signature database 4949 (20100316) __________

The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

http://www.eset.com

We do not have the luxury of only serving the OEM market. This is a retail product and there are substantial users who would purchase the product if it squeezes more out of their systems without upgrades. Getting this memory serves a sweet spot in todays market.

Perhaps, but it doesn’t appear to be a currently unoccupied ‘sweet spot.’ There’s already at least one product that claims to be able to do this (>4GB & 3.2GB to 4GB), has gotten itself through the logo process, retails for about $60, supports formating as NTFS or any other Windows support FS and claims to be ‘patent pending.’ Taking all of that at face value, that’s a lot of work for $60/copy, especially if you’re playing catchup.

mm

xxxxx@gmail.com wrote:

We do not have the luxury of only serving the OEM market. This is a retail product and there are substantial users who would purchase the product if it squeezes more out of their systems without upgrades. Getting this memory serves a sweet spot in todays market.

You are using a very unusual definition of the word “substantial”. The
number of users who (1) have 4GB RAM, (2) have a motherboard that has a
PCI hole of sufficient size to make this worthwhile, (3) are running
32-bit operating systems, (4) are absolutely unwilling to upgrade to Win
7 64, and (5) have the technical wherewithal to know that there is a PCI
hole must be vanishingly small.

However, as they say, it’s your funeral. Assuming you can learn that
there is a PCI hole, how large the hole is, and where the memory has
been mapped, all you have to do is map it in to kernel space, exactly
like mapping a PCI board’s BAR. At that point, it’s yours to use
(although, as Don quite correctly pointed out, it’s also available to
any other utility like yours, and there is no arbitration).


Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

So is it a correct summary to say it will work fine unless another device driver doing the same thing is present?

Measuring the market opportunity is not my department. I would prefer to let it go and focus on features that appeal to all users, but that doesn’t matter because I am not a chief, just an indian. As there is a similar product out there grabbing this memory and has logo and wows their customers with it, I really do not seem to have any technical case to present against this feature.

How can a driver detect this memory in preparation for mapping?

A logo is not validation of the design, the logo tests are not omniscient to know that the driver is doing undocumented things. All it means in this case is that it passed a bunch of generic tests

d

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 12:17 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys

So is it a correct summary to say it will work fine unless another device driver doing the same thing is present?

Measuring the market opportunity is not my department. I would prefer to let it go and focus on features that appeal to all users, but that doesn’t matter because I am not a chief, just an indian. As there is a similar product out there grabbing this memory and has logo and wows their customers with it, I really do not seem to have any technical case to present against this feature.

How can a driver detect this memory in preparation for mapping?


NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
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Unless another driver uses it, or the BIOS is weird and uses it, or they
have a cheap video device that is reported by the BIOS but may not show
up in your calculation, and I am sure there are more that I forgot. As
far as the chief and the Indian argument, if you are a professional it
is your responsibility to point out all the problems.

Don Burn (MVP, Windows DKD)
Windows Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/WinDrvr

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@gmail.com [mailto:xxxxx@gmail.com]
Posted At: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 3:17 AM
Posted To: ntdev
Conversation: Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys
Subject: RE: Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys

So is it a correct summary to say it will work fine unless another
device driver doing the same thing is present?

Measuring the market opportunity is not my department. I would prefer
to let it go and focus on features that appeal to all users, but that
doesn’t matter because I am not a chief, just an indian. As there is a
similar product out there grabbing this memory and has logo and wows
their customers with it, I really do not seem to have any technical
case to present against this feature.

How can a driver detect this memory in preparation for mapping?

__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
signature database 4951 (20100317) __________

The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

http://www.eset.com

“I want to tell all my clients to be sure to avoid this crap at all costs.”

Now I am curious about this. Since it was important enough to trumpet this announcement in this thread can you let us know the outcome now that a released driver doing this has been identified?

Any product that uses undocumented things should be avoided at all costs.

wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> “I want to tell all my clients to be sure to avoid this crap at all
> costs.”
>
> Now I am curious about this. Since it was important enough to trumpet this
> announcement in this thread can you let us know the outcome now that a
> released driver doing this has been identified?
>
>

Granted and agreed, so if the OP will identify both theirs and their
competitors product we will equally scoff, hurrah, and harangue both of
them. The OP did miss the point. Don wants to know BOTH products to avoid
BOTH, not just the OPs.

The personal opinion of
Gary G. Little

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Alexander Grigoriev
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 9:22 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re:[ntdev] Get the unallocated memory on 32-bit Windows, 4GB sys

Any product that uses undocumented things should be avoided at all costs.

wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> “I want to tell all my clients to be sure to avoid this crap at all
> costs.”
>
> Now I am curious about this. Since it was important enough to trumpet this

> announcement in this thread can you let us know the outcome now that a
> released driver doing this has been identified?
>
>


NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
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Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature
database 4955 (20100318)


The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

http://www.eset.com

Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature
database 4955 (20100318)


The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

http://www.eset.com