WhatConfidence?
Member
i have 4 gigs of ram and for some reason my comp is only using 2. I've had people look at it but they cant figure it out, any one know whats going on?
ASnowyCanadian said:Im like 99% sure that computers use some of the ram for processes vital to the computer itself.
9006 said:Hello,
It sounds to me that you're using Windows XP, is this right?
XP memory management is a bit daft, there is a 4GB limit, and you're right on it with your 4GB of RAM, but the memory on anything else in your system (ie graphics card) is also taken into account.
So depending on your specific system (motherboard, memory bus's etc) XP manages it different ways, and it sounds to me that it's taken other memory into account first, then the memory on the first memory bus, and because it would have been over the 4GB limit with the second bus, it's just showing 2GB available, of course it does "see" all the memory but has restricted use of the rest. Sounds crazy right?
So really there's nothing much you can do, you could try enabling PAE to see if that makes any difference (information here...) but any upgrade to Windows XP 64 Bit, 7 or 8 would enable all your memory.
...But if your using Windows 7 or 8 already, then I've written all that for no reason an it's another problem
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