I recently put together an HP server (DL360) to be used purely for web hosting. It has 6GB RAM and a dual 74GB SAS in RAID 1 setup. Windows Server 2003 was installed because the client needs ASP and .net support, and this is the easiest way. Unfortunately, due to a .net program the client must use, Server 2003 was installed using 32bit technology. That means the 3.25GB RAM the system is reading is due to the 32bit limitations.
So I had to brush up on my boot.ini flags to fix this issue:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Enterprise PAE" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /PAE /3GB
Here are the flags per Microsoft’s website (I removed the ones you will never use):
* /3GB
Increases the size of the user process address space from 2 GB to 3 GB (and therefore reduces the size of system space from 2 GB to 1 GB). Giving virtual-memory- intensive applications such as database servers a larger address space can improve their performance. For an application to take advantage of this feature, however, two additional conditions must be met: the system must be running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows NT 4 Enterprise Edition, Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Datacenter Server and the application .exe must be flagged as a 3-GB-aware application. Applies to 32-bit systems only.
* /BASEVIDEO
Causes Windows to use the standard VGA display driver for GUI-mode operations.
* /BOOTLOGO
Use this switch to have Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 display an installable splash screen instead of the standard splash screen. First, create a 16-color (any 16 colors) 640×480 bitmap and save it in the Windows directory with the name Boot.bmp. Then add “/bootlogo /noguiboot” to the boot.ini selection.
* /BURNMEMORY=
Specifies an amount of memory Windows can’t use (similar to the /MAXMEM switch). The value is specified in megabytes. Example: /BURNMEMORY=128 would indicate that Windows can’t use 128 MB of the total physical memory on the machine.
* /EXECUTE
This option disables no-execute protection. See the /NOEXECUTE switch for more information.
* /FASTDETECT
Default boot option for Windows. Replaces the Windows NT 4 switch /NOSERIALMICE. The reason the qualifier exists (vs. just having NTDETECT perform this operation by default) is so that NTDETECT can support booting Windows NT 4. Windows Plug and Play device drivers perform detection of parallel and serial devices, but Windows NT 4 expects NTDETECT to perform the detection. Thus, specifying /FASTDETECT causes NTDETECT to skip parallel and serial device enumeration (actions that are not required when booting Windows), whereas omitting the switch causes NTDETECT to perform this enumeration (which is required for booting Windows NT 4).
* /LASTKNOWNGOOD
Causes the system to boot as if the LastKnownGood boot option was selected.
* /MAXMEM=
Limits Windows to ignore (not use) physical memory beyond the amount indicated. The number is interpreted in megabytes. Example: /MAXMEM=32 would limit the system to using the first 32 MB of physical memory even if more were present.
* /MAXPROCSPERCLUSTER=
For the standard x86 multiprocessor HAL (Halmps.dll), forces cluster-mode Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) addressing (not supported on systems with an 82489DX external APIC interrupt controller).
* /NOEXECUTE
This option is only available on 32-bit versions of Windows when running on processors supporting no-execute protection. It enables no-execute protection (also known as Data Execution Protection – DEP), which results in the Memory Manager marking pages containing data as no-execute so that they cannot be executed as code. This can be useful for preventing malicious code from exploiting buffer overflow bugs with unexpected program input in order to execute arbitrary code. No-execute protection is always enabled on 64-bit versions of Windows on processors that support no-execute protection. There are several options you can specify with this switch:
o /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN Enables DEP for core system images and those specified in the DEP configuration dialog.
o /NOEXECUTE=OPTOUT Enables DEP for all images except those specified in the DEP configuration dialog.
o /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSON Enables DEP on all images.
o /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSOFF Disables DEP.
* /NOGUIBOOT
Instructs Windows not to initialize the VGA video driver responsible for presenting bitmapped graphics during the boot process. The driver is used to display boot progress information, so disabling it will disable the ability of Windows to show this information.
* /NOLOWMEM
Requires that the /PAE switch be present and that the system have more than 4 GB of physical memory. If these conditions are met, the PAE-enabled version of the Windows kernel, Ntkrnlpa.exe, won’t use the first 4 GB of physical memory. Instead, it will load all applications and device drivers, and allocate all memory pools, from above that boundary. This switch is useful only to test device driver compatibility with large memory systems.
* /NOPAE
Forces Ntldr to load the non-Physical Address Extension (PAE) version of the Windows kernel, even if the system is detected as supporting x86 PAEs and has more than 4 GB of physical memory.
* /NUMPROC=
Specifies the number of CPUs that can be used on a multiprocessor system. Example: /NUMPROC=2 on a four-way system will prevent Windows from using two of the four processors.
* /ONECPU
Causes Windows to use only one CPU on a multiprocessor system.
* /PAE
Causes Ntldr to load Ntkrnlpa.exe, which is the version of the x86 kernel that is able to take advantage of x86 PAEs. The PAE version of the kernel presents 64-bit physical addresses to device drivers, so this switch is helpful for testing device driver support for large memory systems.
* /PCILOCK
Stops Windows from dynamically assigning IO/IRQ resources to PCI devices and leaves the devices configured by the BIOS. See Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q148501 for more information.
* /SAFEBOOT:
Specifies options for a safe boot. You should never have to specify this option manually, since Ntldr specifies it for you when you use the F8 menu to perform a safe boot. (A safe boot is a boot in which Windows only loads drivers and services that are specified by name or group under the Minimal or Network registry keys under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot.) Following the colon in the option you must specify one of three additional switches: MINIMAL, NETWORK, or DSREPAIR. The MINIMAL and NETWORK flags correspond to safe boot with no network and safe boot with network support, respectively. The DSREPAIR (Directory Services Repair) switch causes Windows to boot into a mode in which it restores the Active Directory directory service from a backup medium you present. An additional option you can append is (ALTERNATESHELL), which tells Windows to use the program specified by the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ SafeBoot\AlternateShell value as the graphical shell rather than to use the default, which is Windows Explorer.
* /SOS
Causes Windows to list the device drivers marked to load at boot time and then to display the system version number (including the build number), amount of physical memory, and number of processors.
* /USERVA=
This switch is only supported on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Like the /3GB switch, this switch gives applications a larger address space. Specify the amount in MB between 2048 and 3072. This switch has the same application requirements as the /3GB switch and requires that the /3GB switch be present. Applies to 32-bit systems only.