Ditto to what was said above. The only thing that worked for me was switching to 64-bit. At this point that would also mean switching to Win7 as I don't think MS is still selling XP in either version, you might be able to find a retail copy of XP 64-bit from an independent seller but when I looked late last year it was more expensive than just buying Win7.
The problem with the 32-bit OS is that it only recognizes 4 gigs of RAM total, for the whole system, no matter how much you have physically plugged into the mobo. The 4 GB patch for the game will allow the game to use up to 4 gigs of RAM, but it will never be able to use that much since the OS limits you to 4 gigs total for everything that's running, including Windows itself.
On my 32-bit system Windows only recognized 3.25 gigs of RAM despite more being installed - and I could never boot up with the /3GB switch enabled, no matter how much I tinkered with it. I think this had something to do with some of the 4 gigs of usable RAM being already 'reserved' for the gfx card, and then the OS couldn't boot on what was left over for it with the switch enabled. Honestly I'm not quite sure but that was one explanation I found that made sense at the time.
But generally speaking - it's gonna be a memory issue, and unfortunately on a 32-bit system you're always gonna top out at 4 gigs total for everything no matter what you do. Getting the /3GB switch for Windows to work certainly couldn't hurt, though.
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