Installed memory (RAM): 6.00 GB (2.96 GB usable) . Is this correct?

caldom · 26 Dec 2011

Hi, hope everyone had a great Holiday:)
I have windows 7 home premium 64 bit, 6 GB and so does the os, but why is it only allowing me to use 2.96gb. How do I get the pc to read the full 6 GB ?
In the task manager and the sytem properies it reads : Installed memory (RAM): 6.00 GB (2.96 GB usable) . Is this correct? Is is allright to have more Ram avail. for me ( How do I do this?????) or is this the way that it's meant to be and I need to simply buy more RAM If I want more?
Thanks in advance for any and all help.

bigmck · 26 Dec 2011

You should have about 5.2 GB available. Some of the 6 GB is used for your Video Card. Right click on Computer and Left Click on Properties. Use your Snipping Tool to give us a Screen Shot. Thanks,

Night Hawk · 26 Dec 2011

I have to agree with bigmck on a sharing of memory with a large video card. The screen attached here is an 8gb total seeing almost 2gb of ram used 700-800mb approximate for the basic x64 Ultimate and some browsers windows with more ram going to the 1gb video card.

As you can see there a good chunk of ram deducting background services and a few browser windows has been mapped out to the video card. That would generally account for about 20% max however.

Do you have any mixed memory or are all the dimms identical? Mismatched ram may still see the total amount installed indicated but not show all memory is available for use.

caldom · 27 Dec 2011

HI, the RAM that I have is the same that came with the PC so I think this means it's all the same dim

BTW, I have two similar operating systems however, one is genuine and the second one is not. I would like to remove the one which is not genuine( but i don't know how to do it safely without corrupting the other one). Could this part of the problem?
Bob

Night Hawk · 27 Dec 2011

Well the advice I would give anyone dual booting two OSs would be simply removing the primary the second one is one if not reformatting it and creating a fresh new one. Then you simply remove any boot entries for that in the 7 BCD store. EasyBCD is a free program that can see to that if not by the boot tab in the msconfig utility.

As for having more then one OS installed the memory is only being used by the one you were booted into at any particular time. The other sits idle as files on a separate partition or drive and wouldn't be using any.

djmeznyc · 31 Dec 2011

Come on guys someone needs to answer this question, since I have a similar problem... My computer always says i have only 1.74gb usable but i have 4gb of ram installed and it also came with the pc, I have just ordered 8gb of ram to replace these sticks but in the meantime I cannot find why I can only use 1.74gb of RAM, this has been like this for long time and no matter where I go no one can answer what the problem is... I do not have any virtual machines on the cpu and no processes running in the background I have checked many times... I think I may have a defective 2gb ram stick but memtest has not found any problems... please help

bigmck · 31 Dec 2011

djmeznyc said:

Come on guys someone needs to answer this question, since I have a similar problem... My computer always says i have only 1.74gb usable but i have 4gb of ram installed and it also came with the pc,

I'm still waiting on the screen shot................

**cluberti** · 31 Dec 2011

Agreed. Start > resmon > memory tab > screenshot. Then we can help.

Night Hawk · 31 Dec 2011

djmeznyc said:

Come on guys someone needs to answer this question, since I have a similar problem... My computer always says i have only 1.74gb usable but i have 4gb of ram installed and it also came with the pc, I have just ordered 8gb of ram to replace these sticks but in the meantime I cannot find why I can only use 1.74gb of RAM, this has been like this for long time and no matter where I go no one can answer what the problem is... I do not have any virtual machines on the cpu and no processes running in the background I have checked many times... I think I may have a defective 2gb ram stick but memtest has not found any problems... please help

You always have processes running in the background. Those are called Windows services which will be using up a certain amount of memory. A program like Handle or Process Explorer is good to have since everything running at any given time is displayed.

Since you are replacing the stock memory it may as well be good in case a dimm is bad? But it sounds more like a dimm may lifted up the dimm slot and why you are seeing that small amount available.

If you were running the 32bit not 64bit Windows the other answer would be the kernel limitation which for Vista and 7 is just over 3.5gb the remainder automatically being mapped out to hardwares.

In fact I would recommend the OP grabbing one of the two programs there for a look when he goes to post a snipping of the results. That will give us something to go on.

hookitup · 17 Jan 2012

heres the answer to your question.

GO TO THE BIOS. look for settings about your VIDEO settings, there will be something that says "pre-allocated memory size", make it as low as possible, then look for "total Graphics Memory" lower that one as well then save settings and BAM all done it will boost that "usable" number to just about a half gig under the total amount installed. that half gig not usable is saved for certain things like your GPU, startup and various other things.

(note: the names of these two settings may be named differently. AND decreasing total graphic memory might have affects when using programs that are heavy on your GPU)