Checking here-- does my box only have 3GB Ram?

[Jim Bancroft]

I have a PC running Win 7 professional 32 bit. I know that based on things like graphics card utilization / shared memory that what you think you have, you sometimes don't.

That said, this box swaps to the hard drive like crazy, and I'd like to go from 3GB to 4GB. But there are 4 DIMMS in my box now (HP Pavilion M9100T) and I'm not 100% sure that I don't already have 4GB installed. Probably not, but does this screenshot tell the tale correctly, that I only have 3GB?

Also, I believe I have enough swap space properly allocated on my box, as seen in the image below. I generally don't go above 2.2 GB of memory in the Windows Task Manager so I'm not sure why I do so much swapping. Thanks everyone.

 

[corkyg]

Until you change to 64 bit, your Windows OS will only address a bit over 3 GB of memory.

 

[Burner27]

I would go into your BIOS and see how much memory is being reported first.

If there is a memory re-map setting - you can set it to enabled but then you still may not see all of it (if there is 4GB+ memory installed) for this reason:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/clearing-up-the-3264-bit-memory-limit-confusion/3124

 

[Jim Bancroft]

Thanks for the tips, much appreciated.

 

[Boomhowler]

apple insider gives a good description on how the windows memory allocation works for 32bit versions.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...bits_santa_rosa_and_the_great_pc_swindle.html

 

[VirtualLarry]

You need 64-bit. You can install it, using the same key that you are currently using for 32-bit, as long as you can obtain 64-bit install media.