Resource Monitor says I have 18 GB installed memory

Insomniac34 · 07 Aug 2010

Hey all. I just got Windows 7 Pro 64-bit a couple weeks ago and it's been terrific so far. However, there's one thing that has annoyed me quite a bit that I can't seem to figure out. When I look at the Resource Monitor, I'm told that I have 18+ GB of installed memory on my computer. This is obviously not correct, however, since I only have two 2GB sticks of DDR2 installed. Here are some pics showing the issue:

I have no clue why Windows is saying that there's 14 GB of hardware reserved memory. Seems to be a faulty reading of some kind, and I'm wondering if there's any way to go about correcting this or finding out the root of the problem. If I can't get it fixed, it's not a big deal since my performance is terrific. Just something that bugs me a little and I'd like to know what's causing the incorrect reading.

Thanks to anyone who can help me out, it's much appreciated.

logicearth · 07 Aug 2010

Windows gets its reading from the BIOS and the BIOS sets the hardware reserved. So that is where I would look. For the time being might just live it, cause it sees and is using all 4 GBs. So whatever is going on is not affecting that.

Insomniac34 · 07 Aug 2010

Thanks for the quick reply. I should note that the BIOS correctly says there's 4 GB of ram on the startup screen. I've also tried updating to the most recent BIOS but that didn't help out. If anyone can point me to a spot in the BIOS that might allow me solve this issue, I'd be thankful. But like you said logicearth, I have no problem living with this if there's no immediate solution. It doesn't impact my performance at all from what I can tell, and that's the most important thing.

Night Hawk · 07 Aug 2010

Welcome to the Seven Forums! Insomniac34

I'm afraid that's more of a Windows glitch rather then anything to do with the bios if you notice the amount of cached memory pointing to how is taken off of the top of the 4gb you do have installed. For some reason the calculation part of that is way off with something not be read correctly by Windows.

You could try running the system file checker as one option to see if that will find a fault with a system file and replace it. Simply type "sfc /scannow" in at the Start>Run command line while having the 7 dvd in the drive. That will take a few minutes to verify things and replace any found damaged or missing.

The other likely cause may be a registry error seen while the installation was taking place. Since this is a recent copy of 7 installed only a few weeks ago you may end wanting another clean install if you do end up running into other problems as you go along. First try the system tool to see if that helps any.

Insomniac34 · 07 Aug 2010

Just ran the system file checker as you suggested Night Hawk, and no integrity violations were found. I probably won't be doing a re-installation any time soon, so I'll just deal with it for now and hope there aren't any issues down the road (and I doubt there will be).

Dom · 10 Aug 2010

When you installed Windows 7, did you do an 'Upgrade install' or a 'Clean install'? The upgrade option has been known to cause problems, whereas the clean install comes out making the PC a lot more responsive, and less problems that the upgrade install would have had.
Another thought is that the pagefile.sys might have something to do with this. But pagefiling is out of my experience, I would leave that to other experts around this forum :)

Pusspa · 10 Aug 2010

i think it is adding your pagefile to the total.

Lasy B · 10 Aug 2010

Insomniac34 said:

Just ran the system file checker as you suggested Night Hawk, and no integrity violations were found. I probably won't be doing a re-installation any time soon, so I'll just deal with it for now and hope there aren't any issues down the road (and I doubt there will be).

Plus it looks Damned Impressive!!

karlsnooks · 10 Aug 2010

Insomniac34 said:

Thanks for the quick reply. I should note that the BIOS correctly says there's 4 GB of ram on the startup screen. I've also tried updating to the most recent BIOS but that didn't help out. If anyone can point me to a spot in the BIOS that might allow me solve this issue, I'd be thankful. But like you said logicearth, I have no problem living with this if there's no immediate solution. It doesn't impact my performance at all from what I can tell, and that's the most important thing.

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Night Hawk · 10 Aug 2010

Dom asked a good question there about which method saw 7 installed. The strongest indication of a bad upgrade over type leading to odd problems like this is the most likely explaination. Either that or simply a bad install of Windows even using the clean install method where something never went on fully would be the most likely causes.

I strongly suspect that this will turn out to be a minor error in the registry however. The value that calculates the total seems to be off a bit in order to be seeing 18gb with only 4gb of physical memory installed. It seems to be tallying hardware mapping multiple times for seeing the 14+gb cached memory and then adding the other items to that in order to reach the 18gb total. The others seem to be the normal figures you would expect to see.