New
#1
Less than half of my memory is available
I've been trying to track down an issue with my computer randomly resetting, and while checking for problems in my memory, I noticed that while I have 32 GB installed in my machine, in my system properties it says I have 32 GB installed but only 16 GB usable.
I don't recall it saying this before, but it has been a long time since I've bothered to look if I have all my RAM.
I was looking around online, and I see people asking about this phenomenon, and being told that the hardware is reserving portions of the memory. That may be fine and dandy if I only lost a couple gigs, but this is literally HALF of the memory on my machine.
What gives?
But now I've come across something that is even more bothersome, but may give a clue as to what is going on.
I was testing my RAM to see if there was a hardware issue leading to my random resets. (I ran the memory diagnostic twice and it came up clean, but maybe its hardware anyway.) I pulled out half of my RAM to just 16 GB. I noticed that the system no longer said that only part of my memory was usable. The next day, I swapped out the DIMMS again, this time only using the RAM I pulled out the day before.
NOW my system says I have 16 GB installed BUT only 7.96 is usable. Now I have less than half of my memory available!
Now I want to say that this means I clearly have a physical problem with one or more of my RAM DIMMS, but the math doesn't add up.
If there was a straight-up problem with the memory, wouldn't the same amount be unusable? Why would I lose 16 GB when all four are installed, but only lose 8.04 when just two are installed? And why would the memory diagnostic not find any problems?
Other information:
-All of my DIMMS are the exact same brand and model.
-When I tried running the RAM with just 16 GB, in both configurations I used the same slots on my motherboard. The manual states that if I use only two slots, those are the two slots I should use.
-I tried re-seating all of my RAM last week, trying to solve a completely different issue (which is now resolved.) Before then, I had never touched my RAM since I built the computer a couple years back. It was after doing this that I began to have the problem of the computer randomly resetting.
-It was after re-seating my RAM that I noticed I had only 16 GB usable.
-When I re-seated the RAM I intentionally put them all back in different slots, just to maximize the effect of re-seating.