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Boot says 4GB RAM, Props says 2

sonoferu

sonoferu

Senior member
I recently upped my RAM from 1 to 4GB, which the mobo manual said it would take

But I just saw on the Computer Properties "2GB RAM".

Home built, ASRock 929Dual-SATA2, AMD 64 X2 Dual 3800+, XP Pro
 
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Well, I guess its a common question. I finally thought of googling it and there are tons of links to people asking the same question, so I got some answers that I .... sort of .... understand. In any case, it's not much of a worry any more
 
VirtualLarry said:
Make certain that "memory remapping" is enabled in BIOS. If it's not, then you often end up with 2GB of RAM only.
Click to expand...

That shouldn't help much, if at all. Because if he's only seeing 2G now that means the other 2G of physical addresses are used by hardware, so even if the extra memory is remapped above the 4G mark it's still 2G because XP won't touch that remapped memory.
 
What is the maximum amount of memory supported by the motherboard? This might be a chipset issue where the motherboard can not address more then 2 gigs of memory.

If it was an xp issue, with 4 gigs of memory, xp should be able to see 3 gigs, not 2 gigs.
 
Texashiker said:
What is the maximum amount of memory supported by the motherboard? This might be a chipset issue where the motherboard can not address more then 2 gigs of memory.

If it was an xp issue, with 4 gigs of memory, xp should be able to see 3 gigs, not 2 gigs.
Click to expand...

Well the OP says that the POST (boot) says 4G, so I'm assuming that the hardware is actually fine. The amount that XP will see is dependent on the hardware, it's not any one set amount regardless of the amount of "you should get 3.2G" posts around the Internet. If your hardware requires 2G of physical addresses you'll only get 2G, if it requires 2.5G you'll only get 1.5G, etc. It's just that most people, or maybe the most vocal people, have hardware that requires 1G or less of physical addresses in order to function.
 
Well, I work all day with linux and solaris servers, as a test engineer. And I love them but when I come home I do thank MS for Windows. As an OS for my daily life of news and emails and Quicken and such, I sure prefer it
 
try enabling PAE.


To boot the system and utilize PAE memory, the /PAE switch must be added to the corresponding entry in the Boot.ini file. If a problem should arise, Safe Mode may be used, which causes the system to boot using the normal kernel (support for only 4 GB of RAM) even if the /PAE switch is part of the Boot.ini file.

The PAE mode kernel requires an Intel Architecture processor, Pentium Pro or later, more than 4 GB of RAM, and Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003.

The PAE kernel can be enabled automatically without the /PAE switch present in the boot entry if the system has DEP enabled (/NOEXECUTE switch is present) or the system processor supports hardware-enforced DEP. Presence of the /NOEXECUTE switch on a system with a processor that supports hardware-enforced DEP implies the /PAE switch. If the system processor is capable of hardware-enforced DEP and the /NOEXECUTE switch is not present in the boot entry, Windows assumes /NOEXECUTE=optin by default and enables PAE mode. For more information, see the topic "Boot Options in a Boot.ini File" in the Windows DDK
Click to expand...
 
sonoferu said:
Well, I work all day with linux and solaris servers, as a test engineer. And I love them but when I come home I do thank MS for Windows. As an OS for my daily life of news and emails and Quicken and such, I sure prefer it
Click to expand...

I'm the opposite, I end up dealing with Windows too much at work and run Linux at home. I'd much rather deal with that than Windows in my spare time. IMO Linux is just so much easier to deal with because it's so much more logical.

Modelworks said:
try enabling PAE.
Click to expand...

Won't help. MS explicitly disabled access to physical memory >4G in their 32-bit client OSes in order to "protect" their users from bad drivers instead of making the manufacturers fix them. The only way to use the memory in Windows is to run Server Enterprise or a 64-bit client. Other OSes like Linux, FreeBSD, etc have working PAE implementations and thus won't have this issue at all. Although I'd still recommend a 64-bit release for other reasons.
 
Nothinman said:
That shouldn't help much, if at all. Because if he's only seeing 2G now that means the other 2G of physical addresses are used by hardware, so even if the extra memory is remapped above the 4G mark it's still 2G because XP won't touch that remapped memory.
Click to expand...

Actually, I had that exactly backwards. If he has "memory remapping" enabled, he should actually disable it for a 32-bit OS. My bad.

The reason being is, many memory remapping schemes, simply take all the RAM above 2GB, and map it above the 4GB mark, and leave 2GB for hardware.

But if you disable remapping, it maps the RAM all the way up to the point where it starts mapping the hardware under 4GB (usually 4GB - 768MB), and then ignores the rest of the RAM.
 
VirtualLarry said:
Actually, I had that exactly backwards. If he has "memory remapping" enabled, he should actually disable it for a 32-bit OS. My bad.

The reason being is, many memory remapping schemes, simply take all the RAM above 2GB, and map it above the 4GB mark, and leave 2GB for hardware.

But if you disable remapping, it maps the RAM all the way up to the point where it starts mapping the hardware under 4GB (usually 4GB - 768MB), and then ignores the rest of the RAM.
Click to expand...

I would consider firmware that does that broken, it's not like it shouldn't be able to know what range of physical addresses is required by the other hardware in the system. What happens if you happen to have a huge system that requires >2G? Does it randomly crash as the OS overwrites memory the hardware thinks it has exclusive access to?
 
Boot from a linux live CD and see how much RAM you have in that environment. Won't help your Windows problem, but it will help isolate it.
 
Afraid most of this is going over my head. The only thing I have an answer for is the video card

NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS is what Device Manager says.

why?
 
sonoferu said:
Afraid most of this is going over my head. The only thing I have an answer for is the video card

NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS is what Device Manager says.

why?
Click to expand...

Because the video card is usually the biggest culprit when it comes to hardware needing physical memory addresses in order to work.
 
Can I toss out one more question?

Friend at work suggested that the mobo memory slots may not be able to run more than 1GB per slot. I cant see anything about individual slots in the mobo manual [ASRock 929Dual-SATA2]. But there are 4 slots, and the stated limit for the board is 4GB. So it sounds like a reasonable idea. When I got the new RAM, I got 2 x 2GB, just cause the cost was better. Never thought of a slot limit.

But if there were such a limit the POST could not tell me there is 4gb, right?
 
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