Help me gain some brownie points ...

frobisher

My girlfriend's in the last few weeks of completing her degree and she's been struggling with a laptop that is as useful as a lead balloon in treacle. I've been promising to sort it but my last attempt has revealed it to be a little beyond me (I mistakenly wiped the boot.ini file, which kept me up until 4am fixing it in a panic!).

It's a HP Pavillion DV6110eu 1.8 Sempron, with 1 gig of ram fitted over 2 x 512 sticks. But the system profile only shows 256 gig ram. My guess is that this is the problem. So I had a look in the BIOS and the ram is showing correctly there, both as 1 gig and as 512mb when each stick is in alone.

Any thoughts?

old_aussie

Backup all her data to another drive like an external USB drive and then make a second backup to DVD's.
Can never have enough backups.

Then wait till she has finished her degree and fix it.

Edit c:\boot.ini with notepad.

Should look something like

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

jim_bob

check in the bios for something called

os install mode

if you see this just disable it

frobisher

It seems that it's something inthe PC, not the ram. I loaded 2 gigs of new ram and windows is still seeing only 256 mb.

old_aussie: Unfortunately she needs her computer, and the way it is now is slowing her down so much as to be a real problem.
Everything on the computer is backed up externally. The code you've written is showing in the boot.ini

jim_bob: What would that do?

jim_bob

os install mode limits the amount of memory installed in the system to 256 so you can install some operating systems


if you can't find the option , reset all bios settings to default , this should sort it out

Laphroaig52

Why not just back everything up and reinstall Windows?
It never does any harm and it will tell you if your memory problem is software or hardware related.

frobisher

Flyer28 wrote: »

Why not just back everything up and reinstall Windows?
It never does any harm and it will tell you if your memory problem is software or hardware related.

We don't have the discs.

softdancomputer

Try to add this on your boot.ini file:
/MAXMEM=1024

at the end. It should look like
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /MAXMEM=1024
Also, you may try to update the bios if are any available

frobisher

softdancomputer wrote: »

Try to add this on your boot.ini file:
/MAXMEM=1024

at the end. It should look like
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /MAXMEM=1024

I just was just working on that. I clicked the maxmem button and the number 256 appeared. But when I changed it to 1024 it said I couldn't make that change as I wasn't an administrator. But as far as I know it's the user account on the computer! :(:(

frobisher

Although I accessed it through the msconfig/boot.ini/advanced options Maybe if I actually rewrite the boot.ini file itself it will work?

softdancomputer

Yup, you should be able to edit boot.ini

frobisher

softdancomputer wrote: »

Try to add this on your boot.ini file:
/MAXMEM=1024

at the end. It should look like
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /MAXMEM=1024
Also, you may try to update the bios if are any available

I did this and it's still only seeing 256mb of RAM, even though the boot.ini is showing maxmem 1024 after a reboot.

I updated the bios too. I think I might jump out the window after this!

softdancomputer

Try a tool as CPUZ and see what is reporting

xsiborg

seems this is a common enough problem, i just googled it there because the first thing i thought of was a corrupt MBR.

the other previous posters suggestions solved this problem for others-

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itproxpsp/thread/fa8fa99f-33f7-44d1-9bb4-7441036f58d4

but maybe try this suggestion to fix what i think may be a corrupted master boot record:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/repairmbr.htm

and perhaps use the "fixboot" command while you're there.
you wont do any worse damage i can assure you, all you are doing is a simple repair job to write the files back fresh and over-write the junk files.

hope this helps!

frobisher

xsiborg wrote: »

seems this is a common enough problem, i just googled it there because the first thing i thought of was a corrupt MBR.

the other previous posters suggestions solved this problem for others-

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itproxpsp/thread/fa8fa99f-33f7-44d1-9bb4-7441036f58d4

but maybe try this suggestion to fix what i think may be a corrupted master boot record:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itproxpsp/thread/fa8fa99f-33f7-44d1-9bb4-7441036f58d4

and perhaps use the "fixboot" command while you're there.
you wont do any worse damage i can assure you, all you are doing is a simple repair job to write the files back fresh and over-write the junk files.

hope this helps!

The HP BIOS doesn't show the OS install mode mentioned in those threads, and also here by jimbob.

Both of those links are to the same thread. Should they be?

frobisher

softdancomputer wrote: »

Try a tool as CPUZ and see what is reporting

CPUZ sees 1024mb ram, just like the bios does.

xsiborg

nice one for pointing that out!

but yeah, i thought as much about the BIOS option, that an option like that would be only in BIOS's such as those on ASUS boards, etc, not an OEM bios. i dont suppose perhaps, i know you don't have the discs, but there isn't a recovery partition? Fn+F11 it is on my HP anyway to go into recovery mode*, and do a fresh install of the OS, takes maybe half an hour and about an hours tweaking after that.

*not to be confused with recovery console, which is purely a windows thing.

frobisher

xsiborg wrote: »

nice one for pointing that out!

but yeah, i thought as much about the BIOS option, that an option like that would be only in BIOS's such as those on ASUS boards, etc, not an OEM bios. i dont suppose perhaps, i know you don't have the discs, but there isn't a recovery partition? Fn+F11 it is on my HP anyway to go into recovery mode*, and do a fresh install of the OS, takes maybe half an hour and about an hours tweaking after that.

*not to be confused with recovery console, which is purely a windows thing.

There is a recovery partition. I've never looked at what it does! Is it a complete HDD format followed by a fresh XP install? Sounds like a drastic measure but it may be needed. I'm still hoepful that I can find a fix under the bonnet somewhere!

softdancomputer

Take off one stick, and see what is Windows reading after

frobisher

softdancomputer wrote: »

Take off one stick, and see what is Windows reading after

I"ve tried that and it reads the exact same 256, although the BIOS sees the change.

xsiborg

you're right, it IS a drastic measure, but it may be what's needed as even if you fix the RAM reading porblem; to extend your car analogy- that may fix the indicator lights, but it sounds like the engine needs a complete overhaul!

sorry, terrible extension of the analogy, i know, but what im basically getting at is that just the RAM discrepancy alone is not what's slowing down your computer. it sounds like there may be fragmented files all over your hard drive, especially since im assuming this is the first time you will have to do a fresh re-install on the laptop which im assuming is about 5-7 years old given that it's windows xp you're using...

oh i forgot, the updates, ohhh the updates they take hours to download and install, but its been a while since i did an xp install so maybe by now they'll just let you download SP3 straight off instead of the other hundred odd or so updates after SP1...

ok this would take an overnight job but its worth it- SERIOUS brownie points if you can talk your girlfriend round to letting you do it!

softdancomputer

Did the system ever showed 1GB of RAM available?
Its 256 showing on both CP>System and Task Manager?

Shtanto

It wouldn't perchance be any sort of jumper setting?

See if you can screenshot what CPU-Z shows you. There'd be a few clues in there.:rolleyes:

frobisher

Ive attached the cpu-z read out-
672
The task manager shows 261672 total physical memory.

duckysauce

Shtanto wrote: »

It wouldn't perchance be any sort of jumper setting?

See if you can screenshot what CPU-Z shows you. There'd be a few clues in there.:rolleyes:

its a laptop

softdancomputer

I see you have XP Sp2.
I would install SP3, and see if is any change.
If not, I'm afraid you have to try a clean install/restore of the OS.
Good luck.

softdancomputer

duckysauce wrote: »

its a laptop

..and his girlfriend name is Anna...

frobisher

softdancomputer wrote: »

..and his girlfriend name is Anna...

Your powers are strong. Can they fix my problem?

softdancomputer

Try the SP3...I cant think of something else

zodac

Go to Task Manager> Performance. Under Physical Memory, if it shows 256mb, try the following:

Start> Run> msconfig> Boot> Advanced Options> Make sure the Maximum Memory box is unchecked.