4 GB. of RAM on WinXP

[Diggy]

Dear All,

Now, My Workstation had 4 GB. Ram on Mainboard, but on
WinXP can use 3.5 GB. :~~
I would like to know how I can do something to use all my
memory (ram 4 GB.) on WinXP.
Thank you so much,

Diggy

 

[Paul B T Hodges]

Sorry but I've got to ask, why have you got 4GB in a workstation ? Are you
running cadcam or a database or something very memory intensive ?

Are you sure you are getting the benefit of such a large amount of memory.
By default windows xp uses 2GB for user address space and 2GB for kernel
In order to change this you can use additional switches in the boot.ini file
such as /3GB which gives 3GB to users 1GB to kernel, but the user programs
have to have been compiled specially to use the additional 1GB.

Do you have any switches set in the boot.ini file which may overide the
amount of memory which xp can access such as /BURNMEMORY or /MAXMEMORY and
so limit windows xp to 3.5GB even though there are 4GB in the system?

How much does the bios report when you power on ?
Make sure the bios is set to scan memory at startup, atleast until you
resolve the problem.

You could also try running the windows memory diagnostic

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Paul

 

[Mike Hall]

I believe that you have to think along the lines of added status in life..
it demonstrates money and a desire to have the best.. personally, I think
that the op'er would do better to trade in 3.5gb for some sense, but that is
just my humble opinion..

 

[Paul B T Hodges]

Hey Mike,

Thats why I asked

There are legit reasons, such as CAD or other digital processing, or if you
don't want to lay out the money for server, you could set up a system with a
lot of memory to act as a file server or an application server or even a
database server in a workgroup. Or you may be developing applications for a
large memory environment and need a test system.

There can't be that many commercially available motherboards around which
support 4GB.

Ah, maybe thats it, the motherboard only supports 3.5GB !

Paul

 

[Paul B T Hodges]

Whats the make and model of motherboard ?

 

[Ian Smythe]

Dear All,

Now, My Workstation had 4 GB. Ram on Mainboard, but on
WinXP can use 3.5 GB. :~~
I would like to know how I can do something to use all my
memory (ram 4 GB.) on WinXP.
Thank you so much,

Diggy

Diggy, I think you need to use more of your brain than this memory. I
agree with everyone else that you just threw your money away by buying
so much memory. I have always advised people to run XP with 512 megs
of memory unless you are using CAD programs or a big graphics program.
It isn't going to make your computer run faster and in most cases XP
doesn't need it or probably want it. :-(