[Pacman]

Hi new to the forums and just wanted to ask, i have put 4gig of memory in my PC but it only shows up 2558MB on start up and when i use adia32 plus asus probe and Belarc advisor shows this.

2558 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' has 1024 MB (serial number SerNum0)
Slot 'DIMM1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM2' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM3' has 1024 MB

Is the some thing wrong with my PC am i not getting the full use of the 4 GIG or is this how it should be. P.S i am running a ASUS p4c800e-deluxe motherboard and windows XP home

[brain_damage]

Hi and welcome to D-A-L

is all the memory the same?

have you tried removing a stick to see what that does?

[Pacman]

Hi and thanks for the welcome, Yes all the memory is the same i brought 2 x 1 GIG last month and then another 2 x 1 GIG this week i have put the new ones in on there own it they work OK so memory is OK, But i have just found out my bios is 2 years out of date but I'm a bit worried about doing the update as i know if i do it wrong i could mess my PC up, Do you think it could be a bios problem.

[brain_damage]

it may well be, but all the info I can find show that it can take up to 4Gig

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?m...=3&l2=12&l3=30

[Pacman]

Right don't know if this is true or not but my system is a Alienware i have spoken to them and they say there is no problem it is something to do with XP and the motherboard will not show the full memory or something like that LOL ever heard of that one. Also found this on anothere forum.

think that the problem is related to the 4GB barrier.

As I explained several times in other threads, all "PCI-option ROMs" (PCI-cards, Graphics cards - even AGP, onboard devices like SATA/PATA/FireWire controller, ...) reserve space below the 4GB barrier. So you lose memory as soon as you have that much memory that it overlaps with the already reserved memory area.

So you will lose the 1.25GB no matter if you have 8GB or 6GB or 4GB installed!

If you have 2GB installed there is more room to the 4GB barrier than 1.25GB => there is no overlap of the installed memory and the reserved region => you see all memory.

I've read some times that some LINUX systems and Windows for AMD64 should be able to remap the reserved memory areas and access it all. But I can't confirm that right now.

[brain_damage]

I've found this out.

Windows XP can use up to 4 GB of memory. Apart from the system memory Windows also uses a so called pagefile. This is a file on the hard disk that is 1-1.5 times the size of your system's memory and serves as a kind of extra memory. This issue will occur on both Windows XP Home edition and Professional edition (32-bit only) if the system memory and page file together exceed 4 GB.

so some memory on your hard drive is used as page file (Virtual memory)

you can disable the virtual memory

[Pacman]

Sorry how do i do that

[brain_damage]

To change the size of the virtual memory paging file

You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent you from completing this procedure.

1.Open System in Control Panel.

2.On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.

3.On the Advanced tab, under Virtual memory, click Change.

4.Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.

5.Under Paging file size for selected drive, click Custom size, and type a new paging file size in megabytes in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, and then click Set.

If you decrease the size of either the initial or maximum page file settings, you must restart your computer to see the effects of those changes. Increases typically do not require a restart.

Note
•

To open System, click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
•

To have Windows choose the best paging file size, click System managed size.
•

For best performance, do not set the initial size to less than the minimum recommended size under Total paging file size for all drives. The recommended size is equivalent to 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your system. Usually, you should leave the paging file at its recommended size, although you might increase its size if you routinely use programs that require a lot of memory.
•

To delete a paging file, set both initial size and maximum size to zero, or click No paging file. Microsoft strongly recommends that you do not disable or delete the paging file.



http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

[Pacman]

Thanks for the help m8.