Just a comment on the use of AWE. I have a server with 8gb or ram. I used the /3gb and /pae together and this caused me a problem. When using both parms in the boot.ini, I would have problems installing software. When I would install it would give me a message stating that I didn't have enough memory and would not install. If that is all that happend I was lucky.

Sometimes the install with the above parms would wipe out parts of the registry or corrupt OS dlls. Then I would need to reinstall the OS and resetup the entire server.

Now it seems if I only have the /3gb I will get Not Enough Memory errors but no corruption. If I just have the /pae parm loaded, I get no messages and have no problems.

I now only run with the /pae parm.

I am running on a Dell 8450 with 8 gb of ram. My OS is W2k AS and my DBMS is SQL 2000 Enterprise.

Has anyone ever heard of this or had this problem. I did not check into it to far. But I think the installs of older programs may have caused this corruption. Newer programs would only give me Not Enough Memory Errors.

Thanks