said by AlphaOne:Yes, I think 32-bit Windows can use more than 2GB, but not made available for the applications to use.
Not sure how PAE (Physical Address Extension) works, and I'm not sure if it's ON by default.
This issue has nothing whatsoever to do with 32-bit or PAE. It's a marketing decision of Microsoft to limit Windows 7 STARTER to 2GB of RAM.
Any other version of Windows 7 will see and use all 3GB.