Physical memory 4gb - Installed 8gb

When I built my new computer I installed the Vista64 with a full 8gb of ram. Only later did I discover that a patch was needed to access 8gb of ram. I also discovered later that I should have installed the vista64 with 2gb and then later add the 6gb..
Anyway, I've been having BSOD at least once a day.

Today I discovered a Vista screen that says that my installed physical memory is 8gb but the total physical memory is only 4gb. What's with that? Where is the remaining 4gb. Could that be why I'm having problems.

Also today I disabled my video card, sound card, dvd drive, and lan card but I am still getting BSOD.

Do I need to reinstall Vista? I was thinking of pulling out 4-6gb of ram and see how the system does..
Thoughts?

The first thing I would do is try reseating and rearranging all of the RAM modules.

Hi mhumprhi,

Do you have the BSOD code by chance? we can lookup the exact cause also a screenshot of that screen you saw would he useful...Im thinking its directly related to your memory as X32 can only address 3gb of physical RAM.

cheers
dmex

Thanks for your responses. I think I may have the BSOD figured out. Only time will tell. The Gigabyte mother board comes with a utility called GEST (gigabyte Dynamic Energy Saver). The last thing I did yesterday (after all the hardware was disabled) was to un-install this utility. Interestingly I've had no crashes so far. Its never run more than 12 hours without a crash and its been up since yesterday afternoon. I got a little braver and re-enabled the video card and it ran ok for another 4 hours so I added in the on-board lan.

I have Vista 64 installed and have 4 x 2GB ram sticks. All the same. I read something yesterday about needing a remapping utility in the bios to access more than 4gb.. Ever heard of that?? I looked and I didn't see anything like that..

Yeah most manufacturer motherboard utilities don't work with Vista very well, ASUS is one of the worst...
I have heard of the HWMeMRemap option, You only need it for a 32bit OS running more then 3GB memory and not all motherboard have it since 64bit is readily available these days and can handle way more then 32bit.

dmex

Hey wild man, about your BIOS.......... with 4 sticks (8Gb's) you have to manually set your CAS timings. Also set it to "unlinked" but more importantly set your clock timing to 2T. With 8 GB's you can't get it all read on 1T lol.

Also, I had to tweak the voltage a little bit on mine to get it running alright. I thought I was great (been about 4 days since a lock up) then last night or the night before, I locked up again. But that is a lock up, not a BSOD. I don't think I've had a BSOD since i set the clock to 2T

Well, you got me there.. I don't know what you mean about unlinked or set my timings to 2T. Can you fill me in?

Take a look in msconfig (type it in the start icon) and there's an advanced option in there that can limit the usable ram. You could have ticked it at 4gb.

I have never heard of a 64-bit patch for accessing RAM over 4GB. I have three workstations with over 4GB running XP x64 SP2 (8GB each) and Vista x64 Ultimate (16GB). I would check to see if you ram is properly seated. I would test each stick one at a time to see if any are bad. I would suggest matching RAM for 8GB. Mismatched RAM can cause issues. Do you need a BIOS rev upgrade to support 8GB? Do you need single sided RAM on your board?

I checked msconfig and the max memory box is unchecked and is greyed out with 0. The number of processor box is unchecked and is greyed out at 1.

Most of the system correctly says there is 8gb of ran installed. The bios is the latest by gigabyte and it already supports the 8gb of DDR2 or 4GB of ddr3.. All my memory is the same by Gskill. All bought at the same time, same model, etc. It supports dual sided ram.