Memory Woes

kelvin45

kelvin45

kelvin45

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Joined
7 Aug 2009
Posts
26
HAving spent all my budget on New Case, PSU and Fan controller (£260). my actual spec is fairly old. I'm running a Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4 mobo with an AMD 2.4Ghz Phenom 9750 Quad core Cpu. Memory is Kingston HyperX matched 2x2Gb 800 ddr2

I have just switched to Vista ultimate (I know win 7 is about to hit the streets)
and noticed that although My bios is showing 4gb Vista is showing 2.5Gb.
I booted back into XP Pro and had exactly the same results.

I've had the memory out, cleaned mobo etc. If I put either stick into slot 1 the bios and OS pick it up at 2Gb, as soon as I put a stick into slot 2 bios again shows 4gb Vista 2.5Gb. Has anyone any idea what is going on? Is vista mis-reporting and the biops sis correct? or whar?


Kelvin
 
Coxyis said:
Classic case of using 32bit OS?
Click to expand...

Sounds like it.

32-bit operating systems can only address up to 4GB of RAM, including some space that is reserved for graphics and other stuff, which means it'll only use around 2.5 to 3GB of RAM.

Your OS needs to be 64-bit. I'm not sure, but I think if you ring up microsoft, you can ask them to send you a 64-bit copy of your OS (provided you pay £7 or something), and your install key should work with it. It was a while ago I read that though, I'm not sure if it was true, or whether it still holds.

Edit: Actually, I just read you have Vista Ultimate. I think Ultimate includes 64-bit and 32-bit discs, or at least, a key that works with both. If you have another disc in there, use that, or try ordering the disc from microsoft and see if the key works.
 
Last edited:
Nice link there, Shock Therapy. Very handy. I'll have to remember it for others in the future. I'll also echo the sentiment that unless there is some bizzarre weirdness with Kelvin45's BIOS, it likely means that he has a 32-bit OS. While it could be a good idea to update your BIOS if there is an update, it won't fix the issue. Just like others have noted, you are likely on a 32-bit version and you need the 64-bit version. 32-bit will get you
some where between 2 and 3.5 GB of memory out of 4GB, depending on what other hardware you have in your system (video cards, specialty drive controllers, etc). Chances are you will have to reinstall your system OS and applications again. If you had been up for it, before the 20th you could have gotten keys and downloads for either 32 or 64 bit variants of the Windows 7 RC for free. It would have worked until June of next year also. Anyways. If you run into any problems with the install, feel free to make use of Microsoft's official Windows Vista Support Forum. It is supported by product specialists as well as engineers and support teams. You may want to post your question there if you run into any problems switching over to 64bit.
 
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