force vista to use all RAM

Hello All,

I am concerned that Vista is not taking advantage of my RAM. I have searched high and low for an answer, but all I find are posts by people complaining that Vista uses all their RAM, and the obvious responses that Vista _should_ use all their RAM.

My problem is that I have a 64-bit system with 8 GB of RAM, and Vista only ever seems to use about 2.5 GB of it. I notice quite slow performance, for example, when I use Firefox with 80 tabs or so, but RAM usage is still relatively low. Of course my pagefile.sys is always an 8 GB file when I check. How can I make Vista use all of my RAM? I should be getting better performance.

Thanks,
EB

Test Your Computer’s Memory Using Windows Vista Memory Diagnostic Tool - the How-To Geek

Take the test, make sure everything is working properly.

Check the BIOS version for your motherboard. Often simply updating the BIOS cures this sort of thing.

I have 12gb of RAM and my system sees & uses it all, when it has to. But mine always did - just going on what I read online.

http://www.vistax64.com/member.php?u=99672@richc46 Good point, I should check the memory.

@Ex_Brit My system can see the 8 GB, it just doesn't use them. Does that rule out the BIOS or not?

I won't get to try anything until tomorrow evening, and then I'll check back to let you both know what happened.

Thanks.

type this in a CMD prompt


BCDEdit /set PAE forceenable