diff --git a/Lib/test/string_tests.py b/Lib/test/string_tests.py
index 60f5fdb..aab98c2 100644
--- a/Lib/test/string_tests.py
+++ b/Lib/test/string_tests.py
@@ -627,7 +627,9 @@
         self.checkequal('abcabcabc', 'abc', '__mul__', 3)
         self.checkraises(TypeError, 'abc', '__mul__')
         self.checkraises(TypeError, 'abc', '__mul__', '')
-        self.checkraises(OverflowError, 10000*'abc', '__mul__', 2000000000)
+        # XXX: on a 64-bit system, this doesn't raise an overflow error,
+        # but either raises a MemoryError, or succeeds (if you have 54TiB)
+        #self.checkraises(OverflowError, 10000*'abc', '__mul__', 2000000000)
 
     def test_join(self):
         # join now works with any sequence type