A 32-bit process can consume maximum memory

The memory here is logical, that is, virtual. is not a physical memory space. The actual implementation of the logical memory when the physical memory is not sufficient to use secondary storage (hard disk).
Some people naturally ask: since you can use the secondary virtual, then each process does not want to how big virtual memory?
This is not the case, the 32-bit machine determines the memory address space can only be 2 of the 32, that is, 4G

If the program actually requires more memory than virtual memory (although not reaching 4G), Windows will have an exclamation point in a yellow triangle on the right. Indicates that there is not enough virtual memory for you to set the virtual memory to a larger value. If not set, Or if you say that the hard disk is less than 4G will automatically terminate the process can not stop the crash. I ran into it when I used RAMDisk under Vista.

A 32-bit process can consume maximum memory