Windows 7 - Hardware Reserved memory issue ...

Hi all

I'm having an issue with "hardware reserved" memory in Win 7. I followed a guide somewhere to speed up my booting when I was bored and it involved changing the number of cpus used in boot, however after I did this windows only shows 4gb of ram as usable. I undid this change but its still happening!



Can anyone help?

type msconfig in search find the "max memory" and Max cpus" and uncheck them.

Check in the BIOS to see if you have a setting called Memory Hole. If you do, reset it (at the moment, I can't remember whether to enable or disable it).

@zigzag these are already unchecked

@seekermeiser I can check but i dont see why it would be working until now

See, this is why you do not follow those guides that say they can speed up your boot/performance by changing these "Advance boot" options. They are only meant to disable resources for testing purposes. Altering them does nothing for performance, never has and never will in any version of Windows.

I have this exact problem fixed ! With Gigabyte p55a ud3r and Kingston KHX1600C9D3K4/8GX.

When you buy ram, you get them in pairs, as it turned out each pair/memory stick can only work on memory channel 1 or memory channel 2.

If you put a pair of memory that designed to work only on channel 1, on channel 2 (like I did unknowingly). The Bios only recognizes them, "BUT" not made available to use.
Windows 7 can only see the total ram installed (in my case 8GB), but can't make use of the other 4GB on memory channel 2, and
Windows 7 thinks the 4GB memory are "HARDWARE RESERVED".

So I advices you to switch them up between the memory slots, like I did, and now I only have 5 MB HARDWARE RESERVED instead of 4GB like before when I put the ram sticks on the wrongs slots/channel.

And now, have a joyful day !

Had the same issue: MB: Asus P7P55D-ELX
8GB(4x2GB)installed, Bios and Win7_64 shows only 4GB, 4GB hardware reserved
Finally got it to work with 8GB:
What I did:
Power off
Clear CMOS: Short CLRT, short pin2,3:, (Not just reload defaults in BIOS), and back to Normal: short Pin1,2
Press MemOK
Power on
Delete
Now BIOS/Main/System Info: Usable Size: 8191MB (and Win7_64 reports 8GB)
Note: unless Bios shows correct size, Win wont see it.(even though CPU-Z will report it)