
Quote: Originally Posted by
johngalt
There were quite a few boards that had issues with 4 GB of RAM installed, but I never heard of the issues disappearing with the addition of more RAM....
That is indeed good sleuth work - perhaps you should be reporting this to your mobo manufacturer as well, as this could indeed still be a hardware issue and not a Windows issue.
The issue reported above is a memory remapping implementation problem. The BIOS is probably doing something very slow and hacky to implement remapping support. This is definitely something that the BIOS vendor (aka motherboard vendor) needs to fix for you. No, this is not a Windows bug!
The reason for the problem accessing all memory with the remapping enabled and the msconfig "maximum memory" setting is as follows:
1. You've got memory remapping enabled in the BIOS. This causes the BIOS to effectively move the physical addresses of some of your memory to new addresses above 4GB. (Addresses greater than or equal to 0x1'0000'0000)
2. Using msconfig's max memory setting adds "truncatememory" to your boot configuration data. TruncateMemory instructs the boot loader to hide all physical addresses above some value. When you specify 4096 as that value, you will see truncatememory set to 0x1'0000'0000.
3. In your case, only about 1.6 GB of memory is mapped to addresses below 0x1'0000'0000. The rest is above that address, and you've specifically asked Windows not to use it!
I hope that helps you to understand your issue a little more. Please contact your motherboard vendor.