Windows Not Recognising RAM

[Woodsey]

I recently upgraded my system (specs at bottom), including bunging in 8GB RAM (used to have 4GB). I'm on Vista 32-bit, so it should be displaying roughly 3.5GB (as it did when I had 4GB), but in Task Manager and My Computer it says there's just 1.91GB. Speccy and the BIOS both display the full 8GB. Although Speccy also lists this:

Memory Usage 65 %
Total Physical 1.92 GB
Available Physical 673 MB
Total Virtual 4.06 GB
Available Virtual 2.40 GB


I'm not entirely sure if it's just displaying it incorrectly, or it's really only reading 1.91GB (and I'm presuming it's the latter), so, any tips on having it read the maximum?

System specs (new components are bold):

Core i5 2500 @ 3.3 GHz
8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
ASRock Z68 Pro3 (CPUSocket)
ATI Radeon HD 5770 Series 1GB DDR5
156GB Hitachi Hitachi HDS721616PLA380 ATA Device (SATA)
Windows Vista 32-bit

Thanks, and feel free to quote the OP or else I'll probably forget I've made the thread.

 

[DoPo]

quoting for notification

Can I ask why did you even put a 8GB RAM on a 32 bit OS in the first place? You obviously know it wouldn't work but why did put more that (the already obsolete) 4GB?

Sorry, I can't help but I was just curious.

 

[Woodsey]

quoting for notification

Can I ask why did you even put a 8GB RAM on a 32 bit OS in the first place? You obviously know it wouldn't work but why did put more that (the already obsolete) 4GB?

Sorry, I can't help but I was just curious.

Because it was dirt cheap and high-quality RAM. Future-proofing. I think my motherboard needs two RAM slots filled anyway or else the machine won't start.

 

[DoPo]

quoting for notification

Can I ask why did you even put a 8GB RAM on a 32 bit OS in the first place? You obviously know it wouldn't work but why did put more that (the already obsolete) 4GB?

Sorry, I can't help but I was just curious.

Because it was dirt cheap and high-quality RAM. Future-proofing. I think my motherboard needs two RAM slots filled anyway or else the machine won't start.

So do you have your old stick of RAM? If you do, you can put it there and see if it works somehow.

You can check if it actually works by downloading a 64-bit version of Linux (go for Ubuntu [http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download] if you're not sure, but it doesn't really matter which one you get) and burn it on a CD/DVD. You can try it out without much hassle as a Live CD (basically, boots from the CD without need for installation) and see what does that OS report as your RAM.

EDIT:

Do yourself a favour and upgrade the OS to a 64-bit alternative, preferably Windows 7.

Well, obviously that, but I thought there was a reason OP didn't go for a 64 bit OS in the first place.

 

[Woodsey]

The operating system isn't set up to deal with the extra RAM. Simple as. It's probably doing some sort of crazy overflow trick because the operating system code doesn't have a clue what to do with extra RAM. Do yourself a favour and upgrade the OS to a 64-bit alternative, preferably Windows 7.

Surely then it'd just not make use of it, as it doesn't when you install 4GB; it'd still go to it's normal limit, however. I mean, that would seem logical to me: no matter what the memory excess is, it simply remains unused.

quoting for notification

Can I ask why did you even put a 8GB RAM on a 32 bit OS in the first place? You obviously know it wouldn't work but why did put more that (the already obsolete) 4GB?

Sorry, I can't help but I was just curious.

Because it was dirt cheap and high-quality RAM. Future-proofing. I think my motherboard needs two RAM slots filled anyway or else the machine won't start.

So do you have your old stick of RAM? If you do, you can put it there and see if it works somehow.

You can check if it actually works by downloading a 64-bit version of Linux (go for Ubuntu [http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download] if you're not sure, but it doesn't really matter which one you get) and burn it on a CD/DVD. You can try it out without much hassle as a Live CD (basically, boots from the CD without need for installation) and see what does that OS report as your RAM.

Mobo is DDR3 only, old RAM is DDR2. And I'll try that Ubuntu trick if nothing else comes up. I've Googled it and people have had similar issues but nothing close enough (I feel) to try the solutions.

 

[Woodsey]

The operating system isn't set up to deal with the extra RAM. Simple as. It's probably doing some sort of crazy overflow trick because the operating system code doesn't have a clue what to do with extra RAM. Do yourself a favour and upgrade the OS to a 64-bit alternative, preferably Windows 7.

I've tried it with 4GB in, it does the exact same thing - 1.91GB. And like I said, before the upgrade I had 4GB and that was fully recognised.

 

[Saulkar]

Could be bent pins in the CPU socket, I had that once.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

You don't even need to go through the hassle of using Linux to see if the RAM works. Just go into your computer's BIOS and see what it says under memory (usually somewhere in system information). If it says 8192 MB, then it all works, and it's an issue of your operating system.

If it says something less than 8192 MB, then try putting your old RAM back in. If all of it is detected, then it's probably some issue with the RAM you put in, and you may have to get new RAM (check your warranty). If not all of the old RAM is detected, then it's some other issue, probably with your motherboard.

 

[ResonanceSD]

The operating system isn't set up to deal with the extra RAM. Simple as. It's probably doing some sort of crazy overflow trick because the operating system code doesn't have a clue what to do with extra RAM. Do yourself a favour and upgrade the OS to a 64-bit alternative, preferably Windows 7.

I've tried it with 4GB in, it does the exact same thing - 1.91GB. And like I said, before the upgrade I had 4GB and that was fully recognised.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx

This link is the answer to your question. it's an OS error, you need 64b to utilise more than 3.2 GB of memory.

 

[Woodsey]

The operating system isn't set up to deal with the extra RAM. Simple as. It's probably doing some sort of crazy overflow trick because the operating system code doesn't have a clue what to do with extra RAM. Do yourself a favour and upgrade the OS to a 64-bit alternative, preferably Windows 7.

I've tried it with 4GB in, it does the exact same thing - 1.91GB. And like I said, before the upgrade I had 4GB and that was fully recognised.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx

This link is the answer to your question. it's an OS error, you need 64b to utilise more than 3.2 GB of memory.

That's not what I was asking.

Anyway, I've solved it - there was an option in my BIOS which was defaulting to a 64-bit option, 'Low MMIO *something*'. I turned that down to 64MB (32-bit option), and lowered the RAM my onboard GPU was reserving, and now my systems addressing just over 3GB RAM as it should.

Thanks for the answers everyone.