BIOS reads correct amt of RAM but XP doesnt

[NateRD23]

Hello all

I have a ThinkPad T61 with XP Pro. I recently put in another 2 GB stick of RAM bringing it from 3 GB to 4 GB. When I go into BIOS it reads all 4 gigs, however, when I go to Control Panel -> System it says I only have 3 GB of RAM.

What gives???

 

[The_Oracle]

Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM?

 

[NateRD23]

I read the article but how do I fix it??

 

[The_Oracle]

you won't ... live with it

or install a 64bit operating system.

 

[WhitPhil]

install a 64bit operating system.

'Cept, you are still at the mercy of your chipset.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us

And, it isn't a complete loss. You still have a 3GB address space for applications and the system does use some of the other GB.

 

[MichaelDee]

Google "/pae" and you can find all kinds of info which may or may not help you. It would likely be easier to forget it, or switch to something like xp pro.

 

[WhitPhil]

switch to something like xp pro.

FYI The poster is running Pro.

 

[MichaelDee]

FYI The poster is running Pro.

LOL, missed that, but he also said
"I recently put in another 2 GB stick of RAM bringing it from 3 GB to 4 GB. "

 

[ozrom1e]

"I recently put in another 2 GB stick of RAM bringing it from 3 GB to 4 GB.

SO the person does not know how to add, but then again windows xp does not see anything over 3 Mb RAM, Like the other person said, "You'll just have to live with it."

 

[Elvandil]

You can address the full 4 GB in XP using the /pae switch in the boot.ini to switch to the PAE kernel on boot. This is not enabled by default in XP (though NT4 natively addresses 4 GB).

Windows Server 2003 SP1, Datacenter Edition can use 128 GB of RAM using the switch.

But XP may still under-report RAM:

"The amount of RAM reported by the System Properties dialog box and the System Information tool is less than you expect after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2"

 

[NateRD23]

Well to clarify somethings. I do know how to add RAM. I went from 3GB to 4GB by putting in another stick of 2GB. Therefore, I had to slots one slot had 2GB and the other 1GB. So by taking out the 1GB putting in a 2GB I get 4GB. SO, 3GB to 4GB by adding a 2GB stick.

Secondly, I did some reading and it is NOT recommended by any site to adjust the boot.ini because XP PRO allocation tables cannot handle 4GB. By changing the ini file it could cause Windows to become unstable and actually hurt performance. So, basically unless you want to use 64bit XP PRO you cant have 4GB of RAM in your system.

 

[The_Oracle]

well, you can have up to 4 GB ram in your 32bit system ... but the OS wouldn't use all of it, hence i suggested: live with it

the PAE switch isn't of much use on a XP desktop system.

 

[Elvandil]

Well to clarify somethings. I do know how to add RAM. I went from 3GB to 4GB by putting in another stick of 2GB. Therefore, I had to slots one slot had 2GB and the other 1GB. So by taking out the 1GB putting in a 2GB I get 4GB. SO, 3GB to 4GB by adding a 2GB stick.

Secondly, I did some reading and it is NOT recommended by any site to adjust the boot.ini because XP PRO allocation tables cannot handle 4GB. By changing the ini file it could cause Windows to become unstable and actually hurt performance. So, basically unless you want to use 64bit XP PRO you cant have 4GB of RAM in your system.

It works quite well on my machines. But there is not a noticeable performance increase over the 2 GB's I started with. And the majority is not used (except by Vista's new caching feature).