G
Guest
Question:
Does anyone know of a record in Windows Vista that can show a history of how
much memory was installed on a system at a particular point in time? I'm
after some sort of log that shows what changes occurred and when please.
Background:
In March went back to University to study HCI. Before I quit my full time
job I configured and purchased a new Dell PC with 4GB of RAM running Vista
Home Premium to do my study on. The system only ever found about three and a
half GB of it, but I was pretty happy with the performance of my new PC
Last week I got an error message about a memory shortage, which caused me to
check the Performance tab of Windows Task Manager. It said I only had 2GB of
Physical Memory. I thought that was a bit weird; so I checked inside the box.
I found that there was only 2GB left inside (2x1GB). Two of my 1GB chips
were missing :-(
I am almost 100% sure that the chips were there when I got the PC (i.e. I
didn’t physically look back then in March, but the system said it was using
each of the installed chips).
If I could find a date stamp in a built-in log somewhere saying when my
system went from 4GB to 2GB, I could probably work out who it was that took
my RAM. Only a handful of people have been in the room with my computer over
the last few months (We have invoices from some contractors, stating the
dates that they were at our house, etc)
As you can imagine, I’d like to have the evidence required to be able to ask
whoever the culprit was to give back/replace what they took. I do a lot of
application multitasking, and it’s not always easy for a full-time student to
come up with the cash to replace 2GB of RAM.
Where I've looked so far:
I’ve looked for something that resembles a hardware config history log in
the Computer Management tool set, with no luck. I've also checked the System
Information tool. It shows the type of info I'm after, but only at the
current point in time.
I’m not super-technically minded; so I’d really appreciate it if someone
could give me some advice about something that might indicate a date where
the change occurred.
Does anyone know of a record in Windows Vista that can show a history of how
much memory was installed on a system at a particular point in time? I'm
after some sort of log that shows what changes occurred and when please.
Background:
In March went back to University to study HCI. Before I quit my full time
job I configured and purchased a new Dell PC with 4GB of RAM running Vista
Home Premium to do my study on. The system only ever found about three and a
half GB of it, but I was pretty happy with the performance of my new PC
Last week I got an error message about a memory shortage, which caused me to
check the Performance tab of Windows Task Manager. It said I only had 2GB of
Physical Memory. I thought that was a bit weird; so I checked inside the box.
I found that there was only 2GB left inside (2x1GB). Two of my 1GB chips
were missing :-(
I am almost 100% sure that the chips were there when I got the PC (i.e. I
didn’t physically look back then in March, but the system said it was using
each of the installed chips).
If I could find a date stamp in a built-in log somewhere saying when my
system went from 4GB to 2GB, I could probably work out who it was that took
my RAM. Only a handful of people have been in the room with my computer over
the last few months (We have invoices from some contractors, stating the
dates that they were at our house, etc)
As you can imagine, I’d like to have the evidence required to be able to ask
whoever the culprit was to give back/replace what they took. I do a lot of
application multitasking, and it’s not always easy for a full-time student to
come up with the cash to replace 2GB of RAM.
Where I've looked so far:
I’ve looked for something that resembles a hardware config history log in
the Computer Management tool set, with no luck. I've also checked the System
Information tool. It shows the type of info I'm after, but only at the
current point in time.
I’m not super-technically minded; so I’d really appreciate it if someone
could give me some advice about something that might indicate a date where
the change occurred.