Only 2.75GB Useable RAM...

PowerPie5000

PowerPie5000

PowerPie5000

Associate
Joined
7 Sep 2012
Posts
956
Location
Lancashire, England
Hi all,

I'm hoping someone here can help me with a slightly irritating issue! I upgraded a friends OS from Windows XP to Windows 7 64-bit and also added an extra 2GB RAM (making the total 4GB). The system BIOS detects all 4GB perfectly fine and Windows 7 can see 4GB, but it shows up as only 2.75GB useable . I've tried checking/unchecking the max mem option in msconfig with no luck. I also can't see any memory remapping options in the BIOS setup and the PC has a dedicated GPU.

It's an old Compaq SR1000 series PC (SR1639UK) with the following specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ cpu (2.2ghZ)
4GB PC3200 DDR RAM (4x1GB)
Dedicated 512MB Geforce 210 GPU (PCIe)
250GB SATA HDD
DVD/RW optical drive (IDE)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

The resource meter shows 1282MB is apparently reserved for hardware which seems a bit strange!


Untitled.png



screenshot1.png



Any help is much appreciated! Cheers :cool:
 
With 8Gb mine shows;
Total Physical Mem- 8109Mb
Available- 6156Mb

Not sure if that helps at all but I'd be inclined to say that you've done everything correctly and that's all that is available after windows takes it's share...
 
NoNameNoNumber said:
With 8Gb mine shows;
Total Physical Mem- 8109Mb
Available- 6156Mb
Click to expand...

Similar here with Win 8.1 Pro, if only the very few games I play would work on wine. I wouldn't never go back to Windows, ever again. :mad:

If you aren't gaming, than you may think about Linux. ;)
 
Sounds like you have the on-board GPU enabled. Go into the BIOS and make sure any integrated graphics are disabled

Mine shows all 8gb with a dedicated GPU

mC8XNWB.jpg
 
Last edited:
Sigh... I thought thats how much the system is using up, nope my system shows all 8Gb and the one I'm currently on doing a clean up for someone shows 7,20gb but its an APU system.

IMO installing linux would be a good move, especially when your friend doesn't game and his hardware is quite old. There are lots of alternative programs like Libre Office, Gimp (I was amazed how quickly it works on linux!). I would recommend trying out Linux mint cinnamon or Xubuntu

Edit:

Maybe try to scan it with OTL? Make sure to post the log file here...
 
Last edited:
The resource meter shows 1282MB is apparently reserved for hardware which seems a bit strange!

that's your issue

are you reserving any large pagefile?
 
wazza300 said:
The resource meter shows 1282MB is apparently reserved for hardware which seems a bit strange!

that's your issue

are you reserving any large pagefile?
Click to expand...

Not that i know of and it was a clean Win 7 install with all the updates applied and device drivers installed. Nothing has been manually changed.

There's no option for enabling or disabling the onboard GPU and it was never used in the first place. The system originally came with a Geforce 6200 card installed when it was first bought years ago. I'd also go the Linux route, but she's never used Linux before. The computer is mainly used for web browsing and for her son to do his school work on.

My own PC shows 8GB total (all useable) and 19MB reserved for hardware. That's with only 8GB installed and a dedicated R9 280X GPU.
 
Last edited:
PowerPie5000 said:
Not that i know of and it was a clean Win 7 install with all the updates applied and device drivers installed. Nothing has been manually changed.

There's no option for enabling or disabling the onboard GPU and it was never used in the first place. The system originally came with a Geforce 6200 card installed when it was first bought years ago. I'd also go the Linux route, but she's never used Linux before. The computer is mainly used for web browsing and for her son to do his school work on.

My own PC shows 8GB total (all useable) and 19MB reserved for hardware. That's with only 8GB installed and a dedicated R9 280X GPU.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I can't help you with that problem, as I've never came across something like this. It would be very likely that it is onboard GPU, the Linux system is user friendly now. It not like 5 years ago when you had to know all the commands to install anything, my friend installed xubuntu on his little brother PC. he got fed up of doing a format every month, with xubuntu it's been 3-4 months now and the system is running like it was freshly installed. For school work the Libre Office should be enough, I'm currently in college doing an IT course, all the software we mainly use is word, powerpoint and sometimes excel. I can use google docs (no programs, just browser) for this, a bit more advanced for doing some animations we are using blender, another program which actually works better on Linux. I'm not an expert with linux, I only tried out 6-7 distros, now currently testing out Arch with Gnome. For best advice you would probably best to go to Linux & Open Source section here.

Distros which you can IMO have a look at (random order!):

Linux Mint 16 with Cinnamon
Xubuntu Gnome
kubuntu
Elementry OS
lubuntu (Probably the lightest distro from this list)
Zorin OS

P.S sorry for the offtop
 
Last edited:
Surveyor said:
Look in Device Manager and see if an onboard GPU is shown there.

If there is one then right click and disable it.
Click to expand...

Device manager only shows the Geforce 210 card.


Socrates470BC said:
Check this.
Click to expand...

I had a look at this, but 1282MB reserved by either the BIOS or device drivers seems a bit steep!

The motherboard is an oem MSI board. The model is MS-7184 (Amethyst-M)... It has the latest bios that i could find which is version 3.47.
 
any bent cpu pins? that can cause similar results with missing memory

try reseating the memory modules aswell and swap them around

same goes for an overtightened cpu cooler and a bent or flexed motherboard
 
NoNameNoNumber said:
ExRay... Mine shows up as 8GB as yours does but go into task manager and have a look at what's actually available...
Click to expand...

In your first screenshot it shows 4gb and of that only 2.75 available. Mine doesn't. Mine shows the full 8gb. Your system is reserving 1.25gb for something. Did you check the BIOS?
 
Could it be that the graphics card has some weird turbo cache mode? I know it was a thing on a few Nvidia cards where it could use some of your system ram.
 
The 210 does have turbocache IIRC.

Seen people posting about having 1+GB of hardware reserved memory before but not seen if anyones got to the bottom of it, most of them never post back after getting a load of advice as to possible causes.
 
PowerPie5000 said:
Device manager only shows the Geforce 210 card.




I had a look at this, but 1282MB reserved by either the BIOS or device drivers seems a bit steep!

The motherboard is an oem MSI board. The model is MS-7184 (Amethyst-M)... It has the latest bios that i could find which is version 3.47.
Click to expand...


This is not unusual for an older NVidia Card.

Check This
 
Thanks for all the suggestions guys. It turns out the Geforce 210 card has 512MB dedicated VRAM and is advertised as 1GB with Turbocache enabled (can't see any way of disabling it). It still doesn't explain why a whole 1282MB of RAM is reserved by the system though :confused:.

Just to clarify... There are no memory remapping options, shared video memory options or onboard GPU options in the BIOS. This PC is quite old and she only uses it for web browsing and for her sons school work. It can barely run Windows 7 x64 with it's current RAM issue! I'm actually thinking about ditching this old thing and getting her an ex-corporate Dell, HP or similar machine with a quad core chip. Can pick them up cheap enough and even the old venerable Q6600 would run circles around this thing :).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom