Windows 7: My computer is not using all installed memory...

Hello everyone,

I just installed my new 4GB memory cards (2x2GB) in my notebook computer, and it is not showing all of it as useable. It says:

Installed Memory (RAM): 4.00 GB (2.99 GB usable)

Attached is a screen capture of my system properties which shows this. Why is it not able to use all of the 4.00 GB that I have installed?

Thanks for any help! Happy Holidays!

You are running 32 bit OS. It can usually only use about 3.25 gigs the rest of the missing is probably your video card.

That's normal with a 32 bit OS.

A 32bit OS can't address a full 4gb of memory .... typically it will only be able to use @3.5gb of memory... In your case the remainder of the missing ram is probably being used by your graphics chip... You need to install the 64bit version of Windows to utilize the full 4gb of RAM...


EDIT: Ken beat me again!

And have a motherboard/chipset capable of addressing larger address spaces.
And if the BIOS doesn't have a method of remapping...

Thank you everyone! I guess that was $100 down the toilet. I do notice a little performance increase, but I really think I am going over to the other side (Mac).

Sometimes my machine will shut down 'abnormally' because the battery loses power, and so I must boot into safe mode, shut down, then boot normally. Howeve, when I boot into safe mode, I can see all the DOS paths flying by and some have System with a lower case "s" and some with upper case "S". Wouldn't you think by now that *someone* would have thought to proofread thee and make them consistent???

And what is up with this auotmatic updating??? I have it set to download updates, then prompt me to install. Instead, it never prompts me, and then when I am in a hurry and shutting down my machine to reboot or something, it will install all the updates, usually about 10, taking about 20 minutes. I never gave it permission to do that!

And speaking of shutting down, even when there are *no* updates to install, it takes FOREVER. What happened to the days of just turning off the machine??? I swear a nuclear bomb could be falling and I would sill be waiting for windows to finish shutting down!

One last rant. If my iPhone can handle 32 GB of memory, why can my Notebook/Laptop computer not handle only 4 GB, and because it is not running Windows 64 bit??? Shouldn't Microsoft have told me this when I purchased Windows 7???

At this point, I"m so sick of Microsoft. The only thing I want to have to do with them is their Kinect that hooks up to the 360 XBOX. That looks cool, but it is probably a big abomination like all Microsoft products.

Thoughts?

Ummm your iPhone's 32 GBs is not RAM. That 32 GBs is like a Hard Drive for a computer. The 4 GB RAM limit is a 32 bit limitation, not a Windows limitation. This has been known for years. Your lack of research in the matter is of your own fault.

By the way. you already have access to the 64bit version of Windows. You do not need to buy another copy. A license for the 32bit version is also for the 64bit version.

You should use whatever you want to use, but any 32bit OS is going to have this issue - switching to a 32bit Mac or Linux isn't going to allow the OS to use memory the BIOS has reserved either, unfortunately.

Another BIOS issue you should look into before continuing use with Windows 7 (or switching to a Mac OS or a Linux variant - it means the BIOS is misreporting the battery state to the OS when it makes the more invasive checks that Windows 7 does, as will most newer Linux variants or a Mac OS X install).

They're that way for a reason, and while the OCD in you might be satisfied if they were all the same, it's not feasible or recommended that this be done .


Be careful when shutting down - the default is to "shut down and install updates" - you have to make an additional click into the shutdown menu to skip that (if you use the power button or just click shut down in the menu, this is the default).

Sounds like a service or application is "checkpointing" winlogon's shutdown process (aka, winlogon or services.exe asks the app or service if it's ready to shut down, and it keeps responding "in a bit..." over and over). This is configurable in the registry, but there are also tools (xperf) to troubleshoot this and catch the offender.

As a previous poster said, this isn't RAM, it's a disk - also, Windows 7 (x64) could handle 32GB with aplomb - if you bought a retail copy of Windows 7, you already have both the 32 and 64bit discs, and you should at this point be installing the 64bit Windows 7 from the 64bit DVD. Using a 32bit OS with huge BIOS reservations isn't a good idea nowadays.

That is your perogative, but nothing you've mentioned here (other than the shutdown preference to install before powering off) is a Microsoft problem. More research by you in this case would have saved you a lot of time and frustration, so I think your pain is mostly self-inflicted. If you'd like to troubleshoot the shutdown slowness, that can be done on another thread, but I'd suggest installing the 64bit Windows 7 install from the 64bit disc before going any further with your troubleshooting. Pretty much every other setting can be tweaked or troubleshot away.

Well, thanks for the information on using the 64bit of Windows. I guess my question would be, if 32 bit is so bad, and there is a viable option, why is this option not the de facto standard? And, FWIW, I did do *my* research before hand. I called Toshiba, and asked them what was the maximum RAM my computer could address? They told me 4GB...

>>>Cluberti,

Thanks for all the detail in your answers! I appreciate that very much. I am not re quoting directly because I do not have the personal ability to do that. I would still like to know why all the "S's" in the System folder are not consistently all upper or all lower case. That makes no sense to me. Other than that, your points are very clear and well taken. Is it true that Mac users don't have to deal with all of these issues, or is it just a case of the grass being greener on the other side? (I am referring to things like configuring the shut down to not install updates, and figuring out which application is holding up the shut down process. Mac purports to not have these issues, and, from my iPhone usage, it would seem that they are correct.)

Take good care,