Is it possible to get XP to recognize all 4GB's?

[Guest]

Hey boys and girls... Here's the deal, was running with 1.5 GB of some plain
jane memory, and after upgrading my graphics card I decided to drop some more
cash on some nice memory and more than I'll every really need. So, I bought
four 1GB sticks of Kingston HyperX PC3200 DDR. Dropped them in my system and
when checking to make sure it was recognizing them the system page only
showed 3.12 of the memory. So, been studying many many message boards and MS
newsgroup pages.... and seen a few suggestions that might point to the reason
why. But I figured one or more of you might have delt with this problem
already... I checked the specs on my mother board and system before I made
this purchase and they all assure that it can handle and run 4GB. From the
other forums I have read this looks to be a pretty common problem, but none
offered any clear cut solution or even explination.... Oh, and the bios does
recognizing all of the RAM so the sticks are in and working.

System Info:
Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario SR1250NX
Processor Intel Pentium 4 2.93 GHz
Chipset Intel 915 G
Installed Memory 4 x 1GB Kingston HyperX (DDR SDRAM)
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Bus Speed 533 MHz
Video ATI Radeon X1650 PRO
Max Supported RAM 4 GB
Number of Memory Slots 4 x 184 Pin DIMMs
Supported RAM Speeds 400 MHz
Installed Cache Memory 1 MB
Power Configurations ACPI/APM Power Management

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions any of you might have....

 

[Jerry]

Do a Google search on boot.ini and you'll get info on the switches
available. Also check Microsft article 316739 or 171793 or 291988. All
indications are the most you'll see right-clicking My Computer and selecting
Properties is 3.25Gb.

 

[Jim]

Hey boys and girls... Here's the deal, was running with 1.5 GB of some
plain
jane memory, and after upgrading my graphics card I decided to drop some
more
cash on some nice memory and more than I'll every really need. So, I
bought
four 1GB sticks of Kingston HyperX PC3200 DDR. Dropped them in my system
and
when checking to make sure it was recognizing them the system page only
showed 3.12 of the memory. So, been studying many many message boards and
MS
newsgroup pages.... and seen a few suggestions that might point to the
reason
why. But I figured one or more of you might have delt with this problem
already... I checked the specs on my mother board and system before I made
this purchase and they all assure that it can handle and run 4GB. From the
other forums I have read this looks to be a pretty common problem, but
none
offered any clear cut solution or even explination.... Oh, and the bios
does
recognizing all of the RAM so the sticks are in and working.

System Info:
Hewlett Packard Compaq Presario SR1250NX
Processor Intel Pentium 4 2.93 GHz
Chipset Intel 915 G
Installed Memory 4 x 1GB Kingston HyperX (DDR SDRAM)
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Bus Speed 533 MHz
Video ATI Radeon X1650 PRO
Max Supported RAM 4 GB
Number of Memory Slots 4 x 184 Pin DIMMs
Supported RAM Speeds 400 MHz
Installed Cache Memory 1 MB
Power Configurations ACPI/APM Power Management

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions any of you might
have....

While the motherboard can certainly handle 4GB, by the time various parts of
XP snatch memory for their own use (principally shared video memory for
example), all that is left is about what you see.

Jim

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hey boys and girls... Here's the deal, was running with 1.5 GB of
some plain jane memory, and after upgrading my graphics card I
decided to drop some more cash on some nice memory and more than I'll
every really need. So, I bought four 1GB sticks of Kingston HyperX
PC3200 DDR. Dropped them in my system and when checking to make sure
it was recognizing them the system page only showed 3.12 of the
memory.

32-bit XP can use up to 4GB. However the 4GB address space has to be shared
with memory used for other devices. So Windows (not just XP but all 32-bit
versions, including 32-bit Vista) can't use that entire 4GB for itself.

How much it can use is around 3GB, but depends on what devices are
installed. It's normally a little more than 3GB. So installing more than
about 3GB of RAM is usually a waste of money.