Microsoft engineer explains why 32-bit Windows was capped at 4GB RAM, and it wasn’t technical

It’s a popular myth that 32-bit Windows is limited to 4GB of RAM because a 32-bit address can only represent 2^32 combinations, which works out to 4GB. This is one of those things that sound true until you look at the history of Windows XP and Physical Address Extension (PAE). Microsoft actually had a mechanism that let 32-bit x86 systems address...