up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

Possible Duplicates:
Why does Windows only show about 3.5GB of my 4GB+ of RAM?
How do you use 4GB of RAM?
4 GB of Ram installed but only 2.97GB usable. What gives?
Is there way to enable 4 GB RAM in 32-bit Windows OS?

Hey All,

Thanks for reading!

I have an XP Pro box that has all relatively new hardware (about 6 months old), and was running just fine with 4GB RAM (Showing less, but pretty fast). That's 2x2GB.

However, it's been running a bit slowly lately, and looking into it, I see that suddenly Windows is only seeing 2GB RAM (in some places).

I thought it might be a faulty ram chip, but some places still recognize 4GB. It almost seems as though windows sees 4GB RAM, but refuses to use half of it.

Places I've looked are:

4GB - BIOS Startup Screen.

4GB - Belarc Advisor.

4GB - System Information (Total Memory).

0.8GB - System Information (Available Memory) Currently using 1.2GB, so total of 2GB.

2GB - About Windows.

2GB - Process Explorer System Info.

I don't know exactly when this happened. I haven't made many changes lately, other than to move two video cards from another computer to this one, each a 1GB card.

I can provide hardware specs if necessary, but my spidey-sense is telling me this is some sort of windows config issue. Of course, I'm by no means a RAM or hardware guru, so my spidey-sense is fairly useless here =o)

Before I start dissecting the thing, anyone have any idea what might be going on?

Thanks!

link
80% accept rate
1  
32bits Windows? If so it can only use 4GiB of memory and it's having to give 1GiB of it's possible space to each gfx card (leaving you with only 2GiB main memory to use). You need to seriously consider an upgrade to 64bit. Also, check out the dupes: superuser.com/q/50138 superuser.com/q/27086 superuser.com/q/128670 – DMA57361♦ Mar 3 '11 at 9:11
Windows is technically still seeing four gigs of memory, it is seeing 2 gigs of addressable general use RAM and 2 gigs of dedicated video RAM. DMA57361 was 100% correct in closing this it is a duplicate. – Kyle Mar 9 '11 at 2:44
1  
stop editing your closed post and abusing the duplicate links and such, nothing you do will let this post be reopened on its own. If you want to discuss this, raise a post on Meta Super User, that is the place to discuss, not by editing your closed post. – studiohack♦ Apr 12 '11 at 18:15
feedback

locked by studiohack♦ Apr 12 '11 at 18:16

closed as exact duplicate by DMA57361♦ Mar 3 '11 at 9:13

This question covers exactly the same ground as earlier questions on this topic; its answers may be merged with another identical question. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.

1 Answer

up vote 0 down vote

I think that BIOS can see up to 4GB on a 32-bit system but on Windows it is a max of 2+3.2GB depending on what service pack you have.

What SP do you have and Try using SP3 with it.

link
feedback

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.