Upgrading of RAM for installing 64-bit Guest OS over 32-bit Host OS

[yclee01]

Hi All,

I am a total newbie to VMWare and I have one curious question to ask. Currently I have an Intel Core i7 920 PC running on Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit with 3GB of triple-channel DDR3 RAM. I just installed VMWare Workstation version 7 on this PC.

Now I understand that Win7 of 32-bit build can only address up to a maximum of 3.4GB RAM logically and not beyond that. My intention here is to upgrade the RAM to 9GB and then install Ubuntu 64-bit version 9.04 over VMWare with 6GB of RAM reserved for Ubuntu. My question then become: would the guest OS(Ubuntu) be able to utilize 6GB of RAM that I am planning to allocate for it since the host OS(Win7), can only address up to 3.4G memory ?

I would like to thank everyone in advance for your help.

Best Regards,

Peter Lee

[K-MaC · Accepted solution]

Hello Peter,

Unfortunately, you will need to have a 64bit host OS in order to do what you wish. The guest OS will only be able to utilize the memory that is presented to it via the host. Is there any particular reason that you have installed Windows 7 32bit instead of 64bit?

Cheers

Kevin

[yclee01]

Hi Kevin,

Many thanks for your prompt reply. I had tried installing Windows 7 64-bit on my PC but ended up reverting it to Win7 32-bit instead. Hardware driver support is a frustating and helpless experience for me in Win7 64-bit. My Prolink PHS100 HSDPA modem lastest driver just refused to install over Win7 64-bit despite enable compatibility mode support for WinVista and many rounds of rebooting . The same irritating problem occured to my MSI GeForce 9400 GT even though I used the lastest driver from MSI and Nvidia !

Well, in this case I guess my best alternative is to install Ubuntu to another partition and dual-boot my PC. I just want to build my CCIE RnS hands-on virtual lab with GNS3 running within Ubuntu with 9GB of RAM for maximum PC performance

Thanks again Kevin.

[K-MaC]

Hello Peter,

You're welcome. Sorry I couldnt give you any better news. Perhaps give it a bit of time and time and the drivers will be made available.

Also if your question is answered please mark it as answered so that people searching can find this solution easier.

Good luck with your studies.

Cheers

Kevin