Useable Ram

I've noticed a few other threads on these boards dealing with the same issue. But I thought I'd just throw my scenario out there to see if anybody could help...

When I first bought my Dell it came with 2 gigs of ram installed. I recently installed 2 more gigs, thinking that I would max out the 32bit system. Now in my system properties the system shows 4 gigs of ram installed (3 gigs useable).

I have checked the bios as suggested in other threads, and have also checked the msconfig to make sure that no maximum memory amounts were set.

Are there any other suggestions I might try?

Soopafly said:

Are there any other suggestions I might try?

Try for what purpose? What is wrong?

Indeed, although 32-bit OSs are stated to be able to use up to 4gigs of ram, 32-bit Windows (and possibly other OSs) will only use about 3. I believe their is a way to make it use as much as 3.5 gigs, but I can't remember exactly how. I'm afraid you a pretty much stuck with using only 3gigs unless you decide to reformat your hard drive and install 64-bit Windows.

that stinks, I was unaware it did that. So what does the extra gig of ram do if it is not useable?

Soopafly said:

So what does the extra gig of ram do if it is not useable?

What does it do? I'm not aware that is actually does anything. It basically just sits there being unused. I wish I could provide some better answer or a way to use all 4gigs but I can't. Sorry.

Certain devices reserve address space for their use below the 4 gB limit.

You can view the devices that do this by opening Device Manager and selecting Resources by Connection in the View Menu, and expand the Memory node.

ignatzatsonic said:

Certain devices reserve address space for their use below the 4 gB limit.

Interesting. I wonder why it wouldn't reserve any when I was only running 2 gigs?

Coding Horror: Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM?

Don't bother with PAE or any other workaround, you want to use 4 GB of ram install 64 bit Windows.