Tag Archives: x86

Installing Windows Server 2008 R2 Server with 3ware 9650SE Raidcontroller

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If you need to install Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 on a Server with a 3ware 9650SE Raidcontroller, you can’t just install it on this machine, you can’t even install it with adding the driver during the installation process.

  1. First Update the Raid Controller Firmware by downloading the Codeset ISO from the 3ware Download page UPDATED (Version 9.5.1 or higher).
  2. Burn the ISO file and boot this CD
  3. Update the Firmware
  4. Reboot with the Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD
  5. During the Boot (right after “Press any key to boot from CD/DVD…”) of the CD press F8 and choose “Disable Driver Signature Enforcement”
  6. Now you can add the Raid Controller Driver (Version 9.5.1 or higher) via USB Stick, Floppy, CD or DVD.
    IMPORTANT: You can not add the Driver without an updated Firmware
  7. After you have installed your Windows Server 2008 R2 you can download the latest Drivers and Firmware form here (Version 10.2). I could not found any Codeset ISO with Version 10.2, thats why you have to update first to 9.5.1 (or 9.5.3).

This needs to be done for all Windows Server 2008 R2 Server and Windows Server 2008 Editions.

Pagefile size limits on Windows Server 2003

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Some moths ago I posted a Blogpost called “Pagefile size bigger than 4095MB on Windows Server 2003“. In this post I wrote about the pagefile size limit of 4096MB. Today I got a comment on this post which shows another solution for this.

If you use the /PAE (Wikipedia Link: Physical Address Extension) switch, the pagefile is not limited to 4096MB anymore. Using the PAE switch limits the pagefile to 16TB, this should be enough for the most Windows Server 2003 32-bit systems. If you don’t use PAE the limit of the Pagefile remains 4GB.

By the way, Windows Server 2003 x64 can also have pagefiles up to 16TB and Windows Server 2003 for IA64 systems can have pagefiles up to 32TB. And for all versions, Windows Server 2003 supports up to 16 pagefiles.

For more information on memory limits in Windows Server 2003 check out this TechNet Blog post.

Thank goes to Ethan Anderson for giving me this information.

Pagefile size bigger than 4095MB on Windows Server 2003

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UPDATE: If you can use PAE on your Windows Server 2003 you should check out this post: Pagefile size limits on Windows Server 2003

The pagefile size on Windows Server 2003 x86 and other Windows x86 platforms is limited to 4095 MB per pagefile. But a lot of Windows Server 2003 systems already have 4GB RAM and are using PAE (Physical Address Extension) to use them. So it would be useful to create more than 4 GB pagefiles.

Microsofts solution for this is to create multiple pagefiles. You can now create multiple pagefiles on different partitions. If you don’t have enough partitions or you just have one, you can create multiple pagefile in different folders by using the Windows Registry.

Pagefiles

  1. Create the folders on the drive where the pagefiles should be located. For example, C:\Pagefile1, C:\Pagefile2, and C:\Pagefile3.
  2. Open regedit.exe
  3. I would recommend to create a backup of the registry
  4. locate this key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement
  5. Edit the value “PagingFiles”
  6. Remove the existing values and add the following values:
    C:\Pagefile1\pagefile.sys 4096 4096
    C:\Pagefile2\pagefile.sys 4096 4096
    C:\Pagefile3\pagefile.sys 4096 4096
  7. Save this

Note: It’s still recommended to have the Pagefiles on the same partition as the system

You can get more information in this Microsoft Knowledge Base entry: How to overcome the 4,095 MB paging file size limit in Windows

How to do this with Powershell: Powershell: Changing registry key value