Vista doesn't see RAM

[pally01]

Hi all.
I have noticed that my recently-installed Vista Ultimate does not see 2 GB's of my RAM. Here's my set-up:

ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo.
4 GB's PC2-6400 OCZ
Vista Ultimate O.E.M.
Radeon X1650 Pro.
Seagate 7200.10 250 GB.

I can see 4 GB's in my bios, but Vista only says 2 GB. Any ideas where to start checking? I have checked the RAM on the board and it appears to be installed well.

[cmillar6]

a 32 bit operating system cannot properly address 4GB of RAM, to fully utilize all 4 GB of RAM in your system you will need to run the 64 bit version of Vista.

[pally01]

Thanks, Cmillar6

I guess I errored on the RAM decision. I thought 32 bit systems were good up to 4 GB and 64 bit was needed for anything above. Damn. Does the additional 2 GB in my system have any value at all or is it totally ignored?

[Im New]

a 32 bit operating system cannot properly address 4GB of RAM, to fully utilize all 4 GB of RAM in your system you will need to run the 64 bit version of Vista.

are you sure about this?...i know vista can potentially support up to 128 gigs of ram. that would lead me to belive the 32 bit can support atleast 4 gigs. i would google if i were you because i know of people running 3 gigs

[Panama Red]

Try disabling the page file and see if that increases the amount of ram shown.

[Im New]

here


http://windowsmvp.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!80195647FE07388F!157.entry


this says 32 bit can support up to 4 gigs of ram.


also try a program like pc wizard its free to download check and see if that shows all 4.

[pally01]

Appreciate the responses.

Panama Red - how does one disable the page file?

I'm New - I'll look for PC Wizard and see what that does for me...

[pally01]

PC Wizard shows 4 GB...

[Im New]

if pc wizard shows all 4 then i think it would be safe to say you are infact using all 4. it just for some reason is not showing in your computer information which i wouldnt beable to tell u how to fix.

it seems panama is trying to help you with that

[Panama Red]

Page file, by default, is set to 1.5 times the amount of physical ram installed. It seems that 32 bit OS's add the physical ram and the page file together to get the total amount of memory that it will support. 4Gb is the advertised maximum for recognition but it's more like 3Gb plus the page file. I haven't seen this personally, only read about the concept. If this concept is true, you should be able to disable the page file (aka - Virtual Memory) and increase the amount of recognized physical memory. Here's where to adjust the Page File.

Right click My Computer>Properties>Advanced tab>Settings button under Performance>Advanced tab>Change button under Virtual Memory>Select No Paging File for all hard drives>Select Set>disregard any warning notices>OK>OK>OK>reboot

Please post back with the results if you do this. It would be nice to know if this method does in fact increase the amount of recognized physical ram.

[pally01]

Hey Panama.

Before altering settings, my "Total paging file size for all drives = 2346mb".

I changed paging to "none" as you specified. Vista did not ask for a reboot. It provided me 1 warning, but that's it. I rebooted anyways and RAM is still listed as 2GB. I checked the advanced settings to ensure page file was indeed off, and it is.

Hmmm....

[Panama Red]

Well, so much for that theory, eh? Might as well reenable the Page File. Less chance of nuisance warnings. Thanx for the feedback.

[pally01]

Done, Panama.

Let me know if there are any other worthy ideas...

[cmillar6]

are you sure about this?...i know vista can potentially support up to 128 gigs of ram. that would lead me to belive the 32 bit can support atleast 4 gigs. i would google if i were you because i know of people running 3 gigs



yes I am sure, it was completely normal for Windows XP to see no more than 2.X GB of RAM when 4GB is installed, the 32 bit version of Vista is no different, there's a nice explanation why in this forum

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/32bit-Vista-suffer-GB-limit-ftopict223710.html

[pally01]

Well, I read through the link information 2x to try to get a handle on it.

If I understood correctly (50/50 chance probably), I can change the PAE on the boot.ini file and possibly have as much as 3.2 GB's visible/usable. Having 4 GB's in not gonna happen though, right?

Also seems that in my current configuration (4 x 1GB), my mobo is de-tuning my RAM down to 667 mhz too. Swell! - less RAM and slower too! Not exactly what I was hoping to see, that's for sure.

Do you think it'd be worth it to free up the RAM to the 3.2 GB potential? I will be working on video compression, web design etc shortly and will be trying to get some use out of my C2D/RAM that's for sure (once I figure out Vista a bit more).

[glc]

Don't worry about it - it will use all the ram it can.

[pally01]

OK. I'll leave sort-of-well-enough alone!

Thanks for all the input from all of you...