XP only shows 3Gb but 4GB installed

trackerman

New PC build.
Installed 4GB into ASUS P5B.
Xp only shows 2.93GB in "System" in Control pannel.

What's up here, is XP limited to 3GB ????

Help.
Thanks

Timans

32 bit is limited to 3GB.

64 bit will display 4GB.

I think.

TontoMurphy

second that Timans. Thats the problem. 32BIT can't address 4GB of RAM properly. Same problem in VISTA Ultimate 32BIT

joePC

yep limited to 4 giger, add /3g switch in the boot.ini, then it uses 1gb for the kernel and 3gb for apps.

Good luck....

Inquitus

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us

What MS says

trackerman

Ok, so I've run the search tool but can't locate the boot.ini file

where does it hide ?

joePC wrote:

yep limited to 4 giger, add /3g switch in the boot.ini, then it uses 1gb for the kernel and 3gb for apps.

Good luck....

trackerman

Ok, so some surfing had told me that it's in C:\Boot.ini
I've also enable the "show hidden files" option, but it's still not visible.

Even the dir command in dos does not show it,...it's gone!!


any suggestions ?

trackerman wrote:

Ok, so I've run the search tool but can't locate the boot.ini file

where does it hide ?

dazftw

1st off do you have windows XP 32 or 64bit?

Second to get to the boot.ini file

Click start > Run > type "msconfig" without the thing "" and there should be a boot.ini tab, next click the advanced button, there should be some option for CPU and memory(MAXMEM) just change that to 4096 that should work(if its 64bit) if it is 64bit and it doesn't work! Go back into msconfig and under the general tab and check the cirlce that says normal startup, this "should" give you full 4gigs if its 64bit.

You wouldn't believe the hassle ive went through to get 4GB of ram... Went and bought vista 64bit OEM and then found out vista 64bit cant take 4GB of ram

So I went and got myself a copy of windows XP pro 64bit and after some trial and error and asking on here I sorted it!

Hope this helps lol

trackerman

Thanks man,
I'm not at home till this evening, so I'll try all that later.
I'm usinf XP Pro and assume it's a standard 32bit version of XP, how do I check if it is 32 or 63 bit?

Ray

DeafVision wrote:

1st off do you have windows XP 32 or 64bit?

Second to get to the boot.ini file

Click start > Run > type "msconfig" without the thing "" and there should be a boot.ini tab, next click the advanced button, there should be some option for CPU and memory(MAXMEM) just change that to 4096 that should work(if its 64bit) if it is 64bit and it doesn't work! Go back into msconfig and under the general tab and check the cirlce that says normal startup, this "should" give you full 4gigs if its 64bit.

You wouldn't believe the hassle ive went through to get 4GB of ram... Went and bought vista 64bit OEM and then found out vista 64bit cant take 4GB of ram

So I went and got myself a copy of windows XP pro 64bit and after some trial and error and asking on here I sorted it!

Hope this helps lol

Ginger

XP will only tell you its got 2GB if you install SP2 as it changed the way the memory handler worked.. Pre SP2 you could see 3.X GB depending on your config as a certain amount of mem is reserved for system devices and the XP can only see 4GB in total. So if you have a highend GFX of 512 you are atomatically down 512meg in your memory total.. add motherboard and other resources and you can see where its going!!!

I have 4GB of RAM and even with the /3Gb switch it still sees 2GB but it reports that I have 4 mem banks full and that there is 4096 of total physical mem but only 1.33GB Avail.

As for your Boot ini its a system file so you must show OS files as well. Easier to use the MSCONFIG tool or if you want Right click on My computer and bring up the system properties

Click Advanced and then click Startup and Recovery.. click Edit to directly edit your Boot.ini.. WARNING!!!!! DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU ARE HAPPY IF YOU BREAK IT YOU CAN FIX IT!!!!!!!!!!



Best of luck

Stephen

trackerman wrote:

Thanks man,
I'm not at home till this evening, so I'll try all that later.
I'm usinf XP Pro and assume it's a standard 32bit version of XP, how do I check if it is 32 or 63 bit?

Ray

If you don't know, its most likely that you're using 32 bit
If you go to properties on my computer it will say "Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" if you do indeed have the 64 bit version.

trackerman

OK,
So I've check and it's 32bit XP- so I can live with that.

But now I have just checked my BIOS and it shows just 3008MB of RAM.
When I know there is 4GB loaded.

Have I got a faulty ram stick, or should I see 4GB in BIOS ???

trackerman wrote:

Thanks man,
I'm not at home till this evening, so I'll try all that later.
I'm usinf XP Pro and assume it's a standard 32bit version of XP, how do I check if it is 32 or 63 bit?

Ray

Ginger

See my previous post.. The BIOS can only see 4GB normally unless you do a remap which remaps anything above 3GB to memory addresses above the 4GB range.

The BIOS will recognise the memory but only 4GB in total so 4GB - amount of mem for other devices = amount of RAM you can see..

There should be a BIOS setting for doing something like a MEMORY HOLE REMAP or something like that that will allow the BIOS to see the full 4GB.. This however may cause you to only be able to see 3GB max in Windows regardless because it will not view anything above the 4GB address range

trackerman

Cheers, thanks for the info.

I managed to see 4GB with cpuz so I'm happy thet the memory is working.

Ginger wrote:

See my previous post.. The BIOS can only see 4GB normally unless you do a remap which remaps anything above 3GB to memory addresses above the 4GB range.

The BIOS will recognise the memory but only 4GB in total so 4GB - amount of mem for other devices = amount of RAM you can see..

There should be a BIOS setting for doing something like a MEMORY HOLE REMAP or something like that that will allow the BIOS to see the full 4GB.. This however may cause you to only be able to see 3GB max in Windows regardless because it will not view anything above the 4GB address range

SwampThing

DeafVision wrote:

You wouldn't believe the hassle ive went through to get 4GB of ram... Went and bought vista 64bit OEM and then found out vista 64bit cant take 4GB of ram

That's not true deafvision. Vista 64-bit can use up to 8GB RAM. I'm currently running Vista Ultimate 64-bit with 4GB RAM, without an issue.
It's an addressing issue, not an OS issue.

Check this out.

For home users, it's a fundamental reason for moving to 64-bit. There are other factors to consider of course - availability of software, compatability of software etc.

dazftw

SwampThing wrote:

That's not true deafvision. Vista 64-bit can use up to 8GB RAM. I'm currently running Vista Ultimate 64-bit with 4GB RAM, without an issue.
It's an addressing issue, not an OS issue.

Check this out.

For home users, it's a fundamental reason for moving to 64-bit. There are other factors to consider of course - availability of software, compatability of software etc.

It can actually take up to like 128 or something, just my pc wouldnt boot with 4GB and it wasn't my hardware cause I have it running now on XP!

I don't know what it was maybe I didn't directly edit the boot.ini file as I only figured that out when I was on XP