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Physical Addressing Extensions (PAE) is enabled

The information in this article applies to:

  • Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server

  • Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server

  • Windows 2000 Server 

  • Application-tier server

  • Data-tier server

  • Health check

The Best Practices Analyzer tool for Team Foundation Server queries a Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) class (Win32_OperatingSystem) to determine the values of the following keys:

  • PAEEnabled   A value of True indicates that Physical Address Extension (PAE) is enabled.

  • Version   Values indicate which operating system is running on the computer.

    • 5.0.2195 indicates Windows 2000 Server 

    • 5.2.3790 indicates Windows Server 2003 

    • 6.0 or higher indicates Windows Server 2008

Note

This rule is checked and applies only on computers where Windows 2000 Server is installed.

The tool also queries the CIM_Datafile WMI class for the minor version of ntoskrnl.exe running on the system. This query determines whether security update MS04-032 is installed. If the minor version of ntoskrnl.exe is 174 or lower, MS04-032 is not installed. It is installed if the minor version of ntoskrnl.exe is higher than 174.

An error will appear if the value of PAEEnabled is set to True for a computer that is running Windows 2000 Server but does not have MS04-032 installed.

Team Foundation Server does not use PAE. If PAE is enabled, Windows can access more than 4 gigabytes (GB) of physical memory. Team Foundation Server cannot use more than 4 GB of physical memory. Therefore, you should not install more than 4 GB of RAM on a computer that is running Team Foundation Server. PAE is enabled if the /PAE startup switch is present in the Boot.ini file on startup or if the operating system detects hot-add memory devices. Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, Enterprise Editions and Datacenter Editions, automatically enable PAE only if the computer is using hot-add memory devices.

To correct this error by installing the MS04-032 update

  1. To obtain the MS04-032 update, see article 840987, "MS04-032: Security update for Microsoft Windows," in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

  2. Completely back up the system.

  3. Apply the update, and then restart the computer.

For more information about PAE, see article 268363, "Intel Physical Addressing Extensions (PAE) in Windows 2000," in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

For more information about the /nopae switch in Boot.ini, see the MSDN article "/nopae" on the Microsoft Web site.

See Also

Other Resources

Team Foundation Client Issues