Solved A question about RAM,

i recently installed 2 gigs of ram on my 32 bit (to make 4 gigs), now the system reports that i have 4 gigs installed (on the mycomputer screen), how do i make sure how much RAM im actually using/usable ram dat i have?

-thanx

Hello Kato,

You can look in Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) to see how much RAM you are using, or in Resource Monitor under the "Memory" tab for a more detailed explanation.



Hope this helps,
Shawn

i checked under physical memory (mb) and it only says that i have 2046 mb of physical isntalled, i installed 4 extra gigs, so shnouldnt i actually have 3000 or 3500 mb total?

Katokato,

Check in Boot Advanced Options in msconfig using the tutorial below to make sure that the Maximum memory box is unchecked so that all available RAM is set to be used. This is for Windows 7, but it's the same in Vista.


Memory - Set Maximum Amount Used by Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

Hope this helps,
Shawn

when i got ther i cant go higher than 2048, and even when i check under mycomputer it says that i have 4 gigs installed so i know i installed the ram correctly

You might see if resetting the BIOS/CMOS to factory defaults may help.

If not, then check to make sure that you have the latest BIOS flashed and motherboard chipset drivers installed.

k maybe i need to upgrade to vista sp2, cuz i have sp1

idont think this is a firmware problem. i booted into windows 7 (i hav tri[ple boot) and i could use up to 3.3 gb of RAM, and even in task manager it went up to 3.3 gb ram total. However, in vista the RAM doesnt go up all the way beyond 2048 MB. Do you think its the allocation of Shared Memory on my integrated GPU?

That was the next item to check. How much do you have allocated to it in the BIOS settings?

hmm, i think io fixed it

i went into windows 7 and since i could set the ram usage for windows 7 i thought i could set it to vista. so thats what i did. i set the ram usage from windows 7 in vista. so now it works fine. thankx brink. but it still puzzles me how i couldnt set ram from within windows vista.

I'm not sure how you did for Vista through Windows 7 either, but I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted.