My mobo is an Asrock x-38 twin turbo, running win xp home. when we built this pc people here helped me, and when we did build it, we built it with 4 gb or ram and it worked fine with that 2x2gb sticks then, that was long ago. since then I had to downgrade to 1gb for the last year or so, and today my new 2x2gb sticks of ram came, I installed them in mem bank 1, and it is only finding 3 gb in windows although cpu z is showing the 4 gb, every other thing including windows says 3gb.? any ideas and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks sincerely, mongoose333
Windows XP 32-bit can't see 4Gb of ram. In a 32-bit OS, the entire address space, including devices and videocard is included in that 4 Gb. So if your videocard has a gig on-board, your OS will only see 3Gb of ram as the videocard will take over the address space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier
That's the problem with 32 bit operating systems, they see only 4 GB of memory, total. So after setting some adress space aside for CPU memory and video memory only 3 GB of adress space is left to use for the system RAM.
ok, think it finds like 3. something. wasn't sure I am no tech just amat. builder. vc has 512 so I guess that's the deal then. I was confused as I googled it and someone somewhere else had the same issue and they said they resolved it by remapping memory and solved it and it then read 4gb, oh well. Thanks very much for the help and explaining it. Sincerely, Mongoose333
on the off chance that the OP is using 64bit windows, run msconfig. in the boot tab under advanced options, make sure the maximum memory setting is unticked.
Yes its xp home, and long time no see pill monster, good to see ya. I am pretty sure I enabled memory remapping in bios, will double check on next reboot. If any of ya get bored, lol. I just posted a new issue in the laptop section. Thanks and take care guys. Sincerely, mongoose333
This not necessarly true. My dad has xp 32 bit, 4 gigs ram and a 2 gig 560Ti. The system see's about 3.5 gigs system ram. My back up computer has 4 gigs ram and a 2 gig 275gtx and the system see's 3.47 or basicly 3.5 gigs of system ram.
For all 32bit OS windows users, remember to turn on PAE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension Instructions with windows 2000 as example (copy pasted): Original Boot.ini: [boot loader] timeout=0 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT=”Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server” /fastdetect Change the Boot.ini to become: [boot loader] timeout=0 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT=”Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server” /fastdetect /PAE For Bootcfg command, use: bootcfg /raw "/pae" /A /ID 1 Restart the computer after modification to make the change effective. Original link: http://www.tipandtrick.net/2008/how...and-2000-to-use-large-4gb-or-more-ram-memory/ Remember: Your applications will still only manage 4gb EACH, but with this patch, you can even install 8-16 GB of ram and have the OS manage it like a champ. Well, not like a champ, but pretty well. Noam
Wrote about it years ago and this question still keeps popping up ... but here's the explanation: http://www.kwokinator.com/book/operating-systems-faq/windows PAE won't really solve things much as it's quite broken on the consumer Windows compared to the Server ones. Personally, I'd just say screw it and just recommend you to go with Windows 7 Home Premium x64. deltatux
"It is usually used as a temporary solution as there are a slight performance impact due to the fact it uses the pagefile to make PAE work." What?