Home Premium 64-bit limits me to 16GB RAM. What can I do?

Aelius · Feb 22, 2017

I recently doubled my RAM to 32GB. I then found out that Windows 7 Home Premium limits memory to 16GB (for product segmentation reasons; Professional versions don't have this restriction).

It used to be the case that you could simply use the Anytime Upgrade service to pay Microsoft $75 or whatever to upgrade from Home Premium to Professional.

Well, funny story... Along came something called Windows 10 and a series of reprehensible tactics of strong-arming Windows 7 users into "upgrading" [sic] to Windows 10. Among them being the removal of Anytime Upgrade and the removal of all retail sales of Windows 7.

So, having said all that, is there anything I can do to access the other half of my 32GB of memory whilst remaining on Windows 7? If the answer is "yes, but only using methods that are of, uh, questionable legality" and you don't feel comfortable elaborating, at least tell me that there is a way and I'll, uh, take it under advisement with my good friend Google?

I'm on my knees in front of Microsoft with a fistful of dollars that I'm begging them to accept from me to let me use the other half of my RAM, and they're refusing to take my money.

Thanks.

Mellon Head · Feb 22, 2017

Unfortunately, without some cooperation from good old Microsoft, I don't think there is much you'll be able to do. Without going to Windows 10 Pro, I think you're stuck with 16 GB for now.

Sorry.

HAVOC · Feb 22, 2017

Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit-Newegg.com

Aelius · Feb 22, 2017

HAVOC said:
Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit-Newegg.com

But that's an OEM version. It won't let me upgrade to Pro with an OEM version key. Although I guess I could reformat but that's a huge pain in the ass.

Mellon Head · Feb 22, 2017

HAVOC said:
Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit-Newegg.com

Didn't know that was still available. I know what I'm buying tomorrow.

AddRAM · Feb 23, 2017

There`s no way around it, you`d have to install W7 Pro. But you could upgrade to 10 Home, Windows 10 Home doesn`t limit you to 16 GB, but that`s a decision you`d have to make, but it would be free.

Aelius · Feb 23, 2017

AddRAM said:
There`s no way around it, you`d have to install W7 Pro. But you could upgrade to 10 Home, Windows 10 Home doesn`t limit you to 16 GB, but that`s a decision you`d have to make, but it would be free.

At this point, in 2017, I think we all know that we're all here on sevenforums because we don't want anything to do with Windows 10.

ThrashZone · Feb 23, 2017

Hi,
Windows anytime upgrade died shortly after win-8 was released.
OEM/ system builders are about all that is left now snatch a pro up now while they last.

fireberd · Feb 23, 2017

What or why do you need 32GB? I have a recording studio and some recording projects get fairly big but I never even get close to the 16GB of RAM I have.

johnhoh · Feb 23, 2017

Mellon Head said:
Didn't know that was still available. I know what I'm buying tomorrow.

Question for you Mellon. I've never even considered win10 but have recently been looking into it. From what I can tell if you are willing to go through the tweaking effort, win10 can be made to not call home or do automatic updates, and can be customized to look and operate like win7. Is that true? If so, why hang on to win7 and/or buy a new copy?

Mellon Head · Feb 23, 2017

johnhoh said:
Question for you Mellon. I've never even considered win10 but have recently been looking into it. From what I can tell if you are willing to go through the tweaking effort, win10 can be made to not call home or do automatic updates, and can be customized to look and operate like win7. Is that true? If so, why hang on to win7 and/or buy a new copy?

I prefer the look of Win 7. I also don't like the constant updates at work, breaking my software. I use 10 at work, and I have had Windows updates break engineering software and Excel and Outlook on a number of occasions. In my opinion, Windows 10 is not quite there yet as a stable platform.

I also use a few older programs that unfortunately don't work on Windows 10. I will upgrade to Win 10 at home eventually. I've partially gone through the process as I dual boot, but even if I do go to 10 full time at home, I will still have to boot into 7 to use some programs. We're full time Windows 10 at work, and it isn't that bad, aside from the software issues.

johnhoh · Feb 23, 2017

Had no idea something might not run on win10! What programs do not work?

Aelius · Feb 23, 2017

fireberd said:
What or why do you need 32GB? I have a recording studio and some recording projects get fairly big but I never even get close to the 16GB of RAM I have.

I nearly approach 16GB memory usage when playing certain games that take up 5 GB of memory, like Star Wars Battlefront, combined with everything else I have in the background.

johnhoh · Feb 23, 2017

I greatly doubt that if you were able to install and run 32GB of memory that you would see a difference, because when you nearly approach 16GB, you are not nearing running out of memory. Win7 is different than its predecessors in that it goes out of its way to make use of available memory. So if you think you have only 2GB available and actually know you need 4GB for the next program, go ahead and load the next program, you won't run out of memory.

Nevertheless, here is a link to microsoft's advice on maximizing your performance
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15055/windows-7-optimize-windows-better-performance

a link to minimem, a cool program
Kerkia | Minimem download

and some other programs on optimizing memory
6 Ways to Optimize or Reduce Memory Usage for Running Programs • Raymond.CC

ThrashZone · Feb 23, 2017

Hi,
Gaming wise you'd be better off getting a newer version gpu in the 1080 range

Aelius · Feb 23, 2017

johnhoh said:
I greatly doubt that if you were able to install and run 32GB of memory that you would see a difference, because when you nearly approach 16GB, you are not nearing running out of memory. Win7 is different than its predecessors in that it goes out of its way to make use of available memory. So if you think you have only 2GB available and actually know you need 4GB for the next program, go ahead and load the next program, you won't run out of memory.

Nevertheless, here is a link to microsoft's advice on maximizing your performance
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15055/windows-7-optimize-windows-better-performance

a link to minimem, a cool program
Kerkia | Minimem download

and some other programs on optimizing memory
6 Ways to Optimize or Reduce Memory Usage for Running Programs • Raymond.CC

Except I get grotesque performance issues whenever Star Wars Battlefront reaches 5GB of memory usage, which typically coincides with edging the 16GB usage level in task manager. I used my phone to take a video [converted to a gif] of the problem, aided by a frametime graph in the bottom left (the higher the Y-axis, the longer a single frame lingers.) As you can see, it goes from ~100FPS (10ms frametime) to the low-single-digit FPS (hundreds of ms frametime.)

I'm not an idiot when it comes to troubleshooting. I've tried everything I can possibly think of. The SSD on which my games are installed is a healthy Samsung 840 EVO. Other games don't have this problem (perhaps because almost no other game uses this much memory).

Updating graphics drivers
Clean uninstall of graphics drivers with Display Driver Uninstaller followed by safe-mode reinstall of graphics drivers
Swapping out to a different GPU
Monitoring GPU and CPU temperatures (they're <60C)
Putting graphics settings to their lowest
Closing all background programs
Running the in-game network graph (there's no packet loss or any sort of commensurate spiking of any network indicators whenever this problem occurs)
Removing the GPU's overclock
Running Memtest86+ overnight

The fact that this problem only occurs when memory usage starts to hug the 15-16GB mark is why I doubled up on RAM (that, and the fact that I'm literally out of any more troubleshooting ideas).

Hi,
Gaming wise you'd be better off getting a newer version gpu in the 1080 range

Obviously, but I didn't purchase the RAM with the intention of improving overall gaming performance. If I wanted more average FPS I'd obviously upgrade GPUs. But this problem is occurring even when I'm already getting 100+ FPS anyway.

ThrashZone · Feb 23, 2017

Hi,
Yep 1080 have 8gb's of memory possibly it would help save your other ram for other items.

johnhoh · Feb 23, 2017

sounds like when you get near 5GB in SWB windows starts swapping out other stuff to disk in order to free up memory for SWB. Of course it does this piecemeal, moving only a little at a time, so it starts hogging your memory bandwidth and your cpu both as a part of that effort, hugely slowing down SWB in the process. It would be better if windows didn't hog that 11GB in the first place. That's why I recommended minimem. You have clearly tried a lot of troubleshooting steps, but perhaps have not entered into stopping windows from using 11GB in the background when you need it for a single foreground app. Minimem is also good for showing you who is using all your memory in the background. Like for instance, on my machine firefox can use a ton of memory, so if I wanted to run SWB I'd write a quick batch file to start SWB that first kills all firefox processes then loads SWB.

johnhoh · Feb 23, 2017

Here's a free program that allows you to decide what background processes to terminate for each of your games when they start up. Something to check out....

Razer Cortex: Game Booster

Mellon Head · Feb 24, 2017

johnhoh said:
Had no idea something might not run on win10! What programs do not work?

OrCAD, Autocad, and Easy PC. All are admittedly versions that are a little older, but work fine on Windows 7. There are no updates to bring them up to Windows 10 compatibility. We have to buy new versions.

Also, Excel and Outlook have had numerous issues after Windows updates.

In addition, and I don't know if this is software related or not, but since upgrading to Windows 10, a number of us have had trouble with network connected resources (like servers) going on and off-line periodically. Very frustrating.

Home Premium 64-bit limits me to 16GB RAM. What can I do?

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