Hello:
Some time ago, I bought a used Presario V2555US widescreen laptop to act as a media pc to bring streams of video and audio from my main PC to my living room entertainment center. Eventually, I installed Linux (Ubuntu) (and GRUB) on a separate partition on this laptop. Windows XP Pro SP3 remained on the main partition.
Windows's System Monitor claimed that I have 384MB of RAM. Considering an upgrade, I ran Crucial's "Scan my Computer" and it claimed that I had 512MB! I restarted my computer and looked at my BIOS--my BIOS recognizes 512MB of RAM. So, I opened up my laptop and looked at the chips. I have two PC2700 256DDR 333 MHz CL2.5 Hynix sticks. I rebooted in Linux and its system monitor reported 375.5 MB of RAM.
So, BIOS claims 512MB (accurate), XP claims 384 (main OS), and Linux claims 375.5. Compaq's spec sheet for this computer clearly states that it comes with 512MB.
I tried every possible combination of RAM sticks in the motherboard. Every time, XP reported 224MB whenever a single stick was in a DIMM, and 384 whenever both where. So, I lose 12.5% of my total RAM when using a single stick, and 25% of my total RAM when using two.
I read online that GRUB sometimes has issues with recognizing RAM MB's. I read that using the mem= and uppermem commands would fix it. I'm still a beginner with Linux and while I tried I wasn't able to use these commands correctly to fix the problem. Eventually, I just decided to replace GRUB, threw in the XP CD, and told the Recovery Console to fixmbr. GRUB was gone and Microsoft's boot-loader was in place.
XP still reported 384MB! Finally, and with a bit of anger after working on this for hours, I wiped out Kill Disk. I told it to wipe the entire disk clean with random characters. That should clean up any problems on the hard drive, right? This morning I full-formatted and installed Windows XP on this clean drive. Still 384MB of RAM!
Just now, I updated the BIOS to the latest version on HP's website (v F.27). Still no luck. There are no BIOS setting to play with, because HP/Comaq doesn?t allow you to fiddle with anything worthwhile in their BIOS.
The product spec sheet clearly lists this product as having 512MB of RAM.
What can I do to reclaim my lost 25% of system memory?
Thank you in advance,
Lucid
Some time ago, I bought a used Presario V2555US widescreen laptop to act as a media pc to bring streams of video and audio from my main PC to my living room entertainment center. Eventually, I installed Linux (Ubuntu) (and GRUB) on a separate partition on this laptop. Windows XP Pro SP3 remained on the main partition.
Windows's System Monitor claimed that I have 384MB of RAM. Considering an upgrade, I ran Crucial's "Scan my Computer" and it claimed that I had 512MB! I restarted my computer and looked at my BIOS--my BIOS recognizes 512MB of RAM. So, I opened up my laptop and looked at the chips. I have two PC2700 256DDR 333 MHz CL2.5 Hynix sticks. I rebooted in Linux and its system monitor reported 375.5 MB of RAM.
So, BIOS claims 512MB (accurate), XP claims 384 (main OS), and Linux claims 375.5. Compaq's spec sheet for this computer clearly states that it comes with 512MB.
I tried every possible combination of RAM sticks in the motherboard. Every time, XP reported 224MB whenever a single stick was in a DIMM, and 384 whenever both where. So, I lose 12.5% of my total RAM when using a single stick, and 25% of my total RAM when using two.
I read online that GRUB sometimes has issues with recognizing RAM MB's. I read that using the mem= and uppermem commands would fix it. I'm still a beginner with Linux and while I tried I wasn't able to use these commands correctly to fix the problem. Eventually, I just decided to replace GRUB, threw in the XP CD, and told the Recovery Console to fixmbr. GRUB was gone and Microsoft's boot-loader was in place.
XP still reported 384MB! Finally, and with a bit of anger after working on this for hours, I wiped out Kill Disk. I told it to wipe the entire disk clean with random characters. That should clean up any problems on the hard drive, right? This morning I full-formatted and installed Windows XP on this clean drive. Still 384MB of RAM!
Just now, I updated the BIOS to the latest version on HP's website (v F.27). Still no luck. There are no BIOS setting to play with, because HP/Comaq doesn?t allow you to fiddle with anything worthwhile in their BIOS.
The product spec sheet clearly lists this product as having 512MB of RAM.
What can I do to reclaim my lost 25% of system memory?
Thank you in advance,
Lucid
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