System not seeing full RAM....

[Fastra]

Compaq Presario SR1909UK Desktop
AMD 64+ 3500 Processor
ASUS A8M2N-LA Motherboard
4gb RAM
7900GC graphics card

Been having some trouble a while now, system re-starting when selecting a particular user on Windows start-up and then not starting up at for a while.

But more recently its been dog slow, the hard disk is working continually and easy task such as opening windows are taking an age, so I checked a few things.

First up I notice that Windows is only seeing 1GB of 4GB

So I decide to have a look inside and re-seat the memory.
On doing so it then doesn't go past the first Compaq DO screen (F1, F10 etc...) - and no F keys work.
After an hour of re-connecting things to the motherboard I say "****-it" put it all back together, stand it upright and the thing starts-up!!!!!!

I'm thinking some sort of Motherboard problem here - dry-joint...???
A few times recently after putting a new power supply in (the problems were happening before this) its still not been starting up properly but again a 'jolt' to the case has fixed it.

I've checked the bios and it says 4 sticks of ram are present, CPU-Z says the same, but I don't know how to check whether they are actually being used though!

Compaqs own help says in the system info bit that 4GB is there too.

But the Task manager disagrees:

Some background info too... A while ago my daughter clobbered a usb memory stick whilst it was still in causing system freezing - un-plugging the front usb section from the motherboard solved this.

I'm going to try clearing the CMOS when I get home tonight and see if that does anything. The BIOS was updated a few days ago too.

I know its case of virtually anything could be the cause, but I post in hope..!

 

[sorn21]

From skimming your post, your running Win XP, which will not recognise that ammount of ram. Depending upon the size of your graphics cards allocated memory it may well be only 1GB left.

Vista 64bit is what you require.

 

[VortexA1]

Well i would put one stick in at a time on the same slot, boot up and then test with memtest ;repeat with each stick , then each memory slot.Doing that you in theory will find out if all the sticks/memory slots work ok or not.

on the post above me: It wouldn't take 3gb less though surely with g.card.

 

[Fastra]

Thanks lads.


Know what you're saying about Windows not seeing 4GB, but I'm pretty certain its actually shown up 3.5gb though in the computer properties bit, in fact I'm damn sure...!

Yep agree about the one stick at a time thing, although I'm trying to put that off as along as possible knowing how it wouldn't start again at all when I mucked about with the RAM.

 

[sorn21]

Yeah, it's highly doubtful to be running anything serious enough to use that memory, but bearing in mind most GFX these days are using roughly 2GB and that graphics memory was taken into account as well.
Running a Mar's Eddition 4GB 295GTX, what would happen under XP?

As mentioned, could be one or more faulty sticks.
Try taking all of them out and placing them in the first recommended slot for your mobo,

Rinse & Repeat.