Has anyone got Windows 2000 Professionalwith 2GB RAM??

[letdown427]

As in, task manager and control panel> system > general tab, both registereing 2GB of ram available? Mine is only recognizing 1GB. It is not the memory I gurantee it, I've run memtest 66 times without an error, it's brand new. Crucial believe it to be a software issue, i.e Windows 2000 Pro. Another IT guy I know says he had trouble getting it to recognize 2 GB, so he slumped for XP, has anyone got it working? Or can anyone else at least confirm that it is a problem? Any idea why? Please help, this is really bugging me, I don't want to have to spend £100 on XP having just spent £180 on RAM.

Thank you for reading

James

 

[Link19]

I don't see why Windows 2000 Pro would have any trouble recognizing 2GB of RAM? In fact, both Windows 2000 and Windows XP 32-bit support up to 4GB of RAM as far as I know.

Do you have Windows 2000 SP4 installed and all security updates and bug fixes released since SP4. Do you have the most up to date drivers for all of your hardware?

 

[Stan]

Windows 2000 runs fine with up to 4 gigs of ram. Does your motherboard say it has 2 gigs on boot?

 

[mike3uz]

Does your system have onboard graphics.

 

[John]

Originally posted by: letdown427
It is not the memory I gurantee it, I've run memtest 66 times without an error, it's brand new.

Does the bios show 2GB? If not then it's a memory problem. Try swapping slots. Try each module by iteself. FWIW new memory can can also be DOA or become defective at the blink of an eye.

Another IT guy I know says he had trouble getting it to recognize 2 GB, so he slumped for XP, has anyone got it working?

As with most self proclaimed "IT" guys they are usually FOS.

Win2K Pro supports up to 4GB of memory.

 

[petey117]

4GB usually ends up being 3.5GB in most computers.....
buy yeah, you should have no problems with 2GB and 2Kpro

is it a fresh install?

 

[letdown427]

Yeh, I know it should support up to 4 GB. BIOS says 2048MB OK. Motherboard supports up to 4GB. I've tried booting into windows with one GB, in slots one or two, with each module in turn. All recognizes 1GB in that case. CPU-z, PCMark04 both recognize 1GB in each slot, but PCmark04 also says that only 1GB is available (like task manager and the general tab in System). I've checked that /mamem isnt checked in boot.ini It is a fresh install of 2000, infact, theres been about 3 trying to fix this. All drivers have been reinstalled/updated.
The FOS 'IT'guy didn't say that 2000 Pro doesn't support 2GB of ram, as indeed it should do, XP does, 2000 does. He simply said that he'd tried to get it to recognize 2GB of RAM, and hadn't managed it, hence why I just wanted to know if anyone else here had managed it, as I don't see why it shouldn't support it either. I've lowered the pagefile too, so that that doesn't interfere with windows recognizing physical memory (as isn't that included in the 4GB?)

Thanks for the contributions, it'd be awesome if we could find a solution!


Edit: Oh, and I'm using a gfx card, so no onboard graphics running. And yes, SP4 etc all up to date.

 

[Steve]

Would you mind posting screenshots of what you mean? Where do you see it saying 1GB available?

 

[petey117]

some motherboards have an "os install" setting in the bios, and that limits available ram so you can install on OS (not sure why this is useful)

also make sure your config.sys, and autoexec.bat are blank

 

[letdown427]

well, if u press ctrl shift esc, u get task manager. Then on performance tab , under physical memory? 1047532 or something. i.e 1GB. Also, Windows key + Break shortcuts to the system properties form. There it says 1GB available also.

petey, when you say in the bios, do you mean it's adjustable in the BIOS, or it's just a setting hidden in it? I'll look in config.sys etc when I get home tonight. Many thanks.

Still, nobody has yet said, yes, I have windows 2000 pro, and it recognizes my 2GB of ram, so...

 

[Steve]

If you hit the Print Screen button on your keyboard you'll take a screenshot. Hit it, go into MS Paint, do Edit->Paste. Crop and label as desired, then upload to pics.bbzzdd.com (make yourself a free account) and post a link to the picture here.

 

[letdown427]

OK I'll do that, then edit this post with a link. I jsut didn't see the point of posting pictures as i know exactly what they say.

Physical Memory (K)
Total 1047784
Available 655840 (at this moment, mem usage is at ~337080)
SystemCache 735512

Short of putting a little frame around it, that's exactly what the picture will show.

System Properties form shows

System:
Microsoft Windows 2000
5.00.2195
Service Pack 4

Registered to:

me

number etc


Computer:

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
AT/AT Compatible
1,047,784KB RAM


I just thought i'd save you the time of going to the link i'll post in a bit.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/letdown427/Desktopjpg.jpg

There's the pic, plenty of info in there.Oh, and sorry, i didn't mean to sound annoyed or anything, if that's how it came across. You're trying to help me, I sure ain't gonna be an @$$ about it!!

Whats possibly most odd is that PCMark insists both have an enabled size of 1Gb, and yet total memory is 1Gb also. :S.

It's an ASRock 939 dual sata2. I didn't mention it earlier coz i know a lot of people hate it as it's cheap lol, and i'm beginning to distrust it too. UliM1695 isn't it?

 

[Steve]

All right, it just helps to show a pic as sometimes someone can say one thing and mean another but I see exactly what you mean and that is very weird. What kind of motherboard do you have? Do you know its chipset?

 

[Smilin]

don't have a maxmem switch in your boot.ini do ya?

 

[letdown427]

No, i've checked it. I posted in the technical assisstance forum about this issue and got no replies. Forogot that i didn't mention it here, sorry.

I've checked boot.ini, maxmem isn't checked, and I tried checking i and setting it at 2048, but it just reset to 1024.

 

[bsobel]

I've lowered the pagefile too, so that that doesn't interfere with windows recognizing physical memory (as isn't that included in the 4GB?)

No it is not.

I know this is a silly question, but have you checked your MB manual for any settings that might effect memory seen by the OS. Are you sure it's slots 1 and 2 not 1 and 3 for two dimms on that system?

 

[letdown427]

 

[letdown427]

as they say, OMG!

bsobel, you might just be a genius . It says slots 1 and 3 in the manual, i hadn't checked that, I assumed the colour coding meant 1 and 2. If this works, I'll be very, very happy!!!

EDIT: OK, wait, no, in my excitement, i didn't actually read the little table in the manual properly. They are set up right, slots 1 and 2. I may try slots 3 and 4 just in case, but as the bios recognizes 2048 in dual channel mode, I doubt there's any point.

 

[Smilin]

your motherboard should have a set of utilities for hardware monitoring. Check this app and it should tell you the actual brand of memory in each slot. See if this appears correct.

 

[Smilin]

Also, check your memory with both task manager and msinfo32.

Task manager collects memory based on Bios int 15h function 0xe820.
msinfo32 collects the memory by summing the size of each dimm

Check bios settings and be sure no devices are mapping out a ton of your memory.

 

[letdown427]

I've checked msinfo32 and task manager, they're both saying 1Gbtotal physical memory.

My motherboard doesn'thave any of those utilities? I'll have a look on the ASRock site.

".....and be sure no devices are mapping out a ton of your memory. "

How would I check that?


Thanks for the suggestions

 

[Steve]

I don't think devices mapping out a ton of his memory would matter unless he had 4GB of RAM. Anything under that, and hardware addressing gets mapped into virtual memory, which can't be disabled. Page file can, but it's a part of VM which can't.

I'm stumped for now, but I'll keep my eyes and ears open.

 

[letdown427]

Thanks for your help, hopefully someone will read this and just post saying that they are using Windows 2000 Professional with 2GB of RAM, then at least we'll know it's possible.

Its a clean install of windows too, so it's not like I've changed anything by accident.

Thanks anyway, I'll post if it gets solved!

 

[Smilin]

any bios updates available?

 

[letdown427]

I'll try them, there's two newer ones, they seem to remove a lot of overclocking options though.

The Crucial support guy I contacted(who consulted another support guy) concluded it had to be a windows/software problem, as the ram passed memtest 66 times without error and the bios recognized 2048Mb etc.