Maxmem switch in boot.ini

[Guest]

I've inherited some Exchange 2000 servers running on Windows 2000 (standard,
NOT enterprise edition).

For reasons that I'm not sure of most of them have a /maxmem switch in the
boot.ini file for the main boot system. The servers have 2G of memory, and
the /maxmem swith is set to 1024.

In searching various microsoft resources for information on this, I've not
found any useful production purpose for this switch. Most of the references
have been for testing an application behavior with limited memory or for
isolating memory module mismatch problems.

Can anyone think of any useful purpose this switch could be serving on a
production Exchange server?

The other wrinkle is that it is implemented like this: /maxmem:1024

All the documentation I see references a format of /maxmem=nnnn ("=" not
":").

Does it get parsed properly either way, or do I have a switch deployed
incorrectly for reasons unknown thus not really causing me any problems(?)

Thanks!

 

[Jerold Schulman]

I've inherited some Exchange 2000 servers running on Windows 2000 (standard,
NOT enterprise edition).

For reasons that I'm not sure of most of them have a /maxmem switch in the
boot.ini file for the main boot system. The servers have 2G of memory, and
the /maxmem swith is set to 1024.

In searching various microsoft resources for information on this, I've not
found any useful production purpose for this switch. Most of the references
have been for testing an application behavior with limited memory or for
isolating memory module mismatch problems.

Can anyone think of any useful purpose this switch could be serving on a
production Exchange server?

The other wrinkle is that it is implemented like this: /maxmem:1024

All the documentation I see references a format of /maxmem=nnnn ("=" not
":").

Does it get parsed properly either way, or do I have a switch deployed
incorrectly for reasons unknown thus not really causing me any problems(?)

Thanks!

See Task Manager to see if the switch is being parsed.
I can think of no valid reason to limit the memory.


Jerold Schulman
Windows Server MVP
JSI, Inc.
http://www.jsiinc.com