Vista and 4 gig of ram

[super1]

I have 4 gigs of ram. Vista Enterprise only sees 2813. When I remove 1
stick (any stick of 1 gig) it still sees 2813. When I remove another stick
(any stick) it sees 2046 like it should.

Is there some special boot option that has to be enabled to get more than
2813 of ram?

Yea Vista.

 

[Richard Urban]

Vista 32 bit edition will see somewhat less than 4 gig of RAM. The RAM is
being used by the operating system. It is just not visible or available for
use by your programs. It's the nature of a 32 bit operating system on an x86
motherboard.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Dominic Payer]

See what options are available in the BIOS. Changing the "Memory hole" and
MTRR settings, if available, may allow the OS to use the full 4GB if you
have an x64 system.

x86 systems are unlikely to report more than about 3.25GB, no matter what
BIOS settings are made, as they can address a maximum of 4GB and about
750MB will always be reserved for system use.

 

[steve]

I have 4 gigs of ram. Vista Enterprise only sees 2813. When I remove 1
stick (any stick of 1 gig) it still sees 2813. When I remove another stick
(any stick) it sees 2046 like it should.

Is there some special boot option that has to be enabled to get more than
2813 of ram?

Yea Vista.

You need 64-bit Vista in order to utilize more than 3.25GB of RAM.

Don't bother installing more than 3GB RAM in a 32-bit Windows operating
system. As another poster said, check your BIOS settings regarding the
2813MB (which is irregular, but may be caused if you have a video card or
other PCI/PCIe cards with large amounts of on-board RAM). Usually the cap is
3.25GB (in 32-bit Windows). Windows reserves address space from 3.25 to
4.00GB for system resources.

I am using Vista x64 with 4.00GB of RAM and it is working pretty good.

Steve

 

[Sean Cai [MSFT]]

Hello,

Thank you for posting in the Microsoft newsgroup!

From your post, my understanding on this issue is: Vista reported less
memory than you expected. If I'm off base, please feel free to let me know.

Thanks to everyone for their input.

Just like Richard said, the problem is caused by hardware limitations. The
following KB described this issue:

Windows Vista or Windows Server 2003 may report less memory than you expect
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929580

You can fix this issue by enabling a PAE boot switch. However, you can't
let Vista using this parameter by editing boot.ini, since Vista doesn't use
this file anymore.

You can add the switch by the following steps:

1. Reboot Vista to safe mode with command line
2. Run the command : bcdedit /set PAE ForceEnable
3. Reboot the system and check whether the problem is fixed

Here are some other files you can refer to:
BCDEdit /set
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906211.aspx
Boot Configuration Data Editor Frequently Asked Questions
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/85cd5efe-c349-427c-b03
5-c2719d4af7781033.mspx?mfr=true

Please let me know if you have any other concerns, or need anything else.

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

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