32bit XP sees only 2.5GB out of 4GB....

[unevendozen]

Good evening gents and ladies...

I was surprised tonight when I was looking at my system properties and noticed that it is only recognizing 2.5GB out of the 4GB total.

Now, its been awhile since I installed the 4GB, but I am almost positive it previously saw 3 or 3.25GB. What would cause it to only see 2.5???

Also, I just checked the BIOS, in case one of the sticks was bad, but the BIOS sees all four gigs and says they are all available for use. I assume this rules out a dead stick.

Thanks

 

[Fallengod]

Umm..... Yeah it should see 3.2gb.....


No clue. ARe you using Vista? Maybe one of those crackheadish utilities they have?

 

[unevendozen]

Nope, 32bit XP.

Could a virus cause something like this? No other signs of infection present though...

Does the amount of video RAM affect the total XP can see? I have 512 of vid on a GeForce 9800 vid card.

 

[theAnimal]

Is there a newer BIOS available for your mobo?

 

[hanspeter]

What does msinfo32 say about devices taking up address space?

 

[Nothinman]

Now, its been awhile since I installed the 4GB, but I am almost positive it previously saw 3 or 3.25GB. What would cause it to only see 2.5???

If it really saw a different amount previously then you changed something so think back to what you've done recently.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

how much ram is on your video card?

 

[PCTC2]

Windows XP 32bit can only have 4GB of ADDRESSING SPACE. It never says anything about RAM.

If you have dual 512MB video cards and a sound card with dedicated RAM, that takes away over a GB and you could easily only 2.7GB. That's what happened to me. If you want to use anything close to 4GB, I suggest looking at Vista Home Premium x64 or even Windows XP x64 (not the best driver support for the latter. it's basically Windows Server 2003 x64 minus the server).

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: unevendozen
Now, its been awhile since I installed the 4GB, but I am almost positive it previously saw 3

Previously saw ~ 3GB on this system with no hardware changes since? Check the BIOS for memory remapping option and make sure its set to disabled.

 

[Nothinman]

Windows XP 32bit can only have 4GB of ADDRESSING SPACE. It never says anything about RAM.

Actually it's both because of limits imposed by MS. In virtual memory each process is limited to 4G total with 2G reserved for the kernel or 3G with some tweaking but it's usually not a good idea. In physical memory XP has been limited by MS to never touch a physical memory address >4G even though it supports PAE just fine.

If you have dual 512MB video cards and a sound card with dedicated RAM, that takes away over a GB and you could easily only 2.7GB.

Sadly it's not that cut and dry, the MMIO space used by a device isn't always directly correlated to the amount of memory on it.

 

[taltamir]

ah, conspiracy theories... This is a long time argument i have with nothinman about microsoft's supposed ill intent on the 32bit front...

Regardless. The point is this. 32bit windows OS can see 4GB of address space, of which 0.5 is reserved for system purposes, and then the memory on the video card and sound card are also reserved, and then the left over addressses can be used by ram. You could, with the right combination of video cards, go below 2GB of visible ram.

Just get vista 64bit SP1. It is really good. Vista was a buggy POS when released, but all the major bugs were solved and nowadays it is much better then XP.