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Possible Duplicate:
Windows XP and RAM 3.5GB+

Hi. I've installed 6 Gb of RAM onto my computer running Win7. For some reason most programs (Everest in Memory tab says 3327mb, Task Manager says that too) report that 4 Gb of RAM is installed. I also did Wmi query against Win32_ComputerSystem and the field TotalPhysicalMemory yields 3488931840! However SPD tab in Everest sees both banks of memory and identifies tham correctly:

  • DIMM1: GoodRAM GR1333D364L9/2G

  • DIMM2: Kingston 9905471-009.A00LF

    What the...?

Community
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Nickolodeon
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  • Identical to almost every "I installed more than 4 gig but see less" question, take your pick: http://superuser.com/questions/141930/installed-ram-4-gb-but-2-96gb-usable-why , http://superuser.com/questions/50138 , http://superuser.com/questions/13661/what-happens-when-you-install-4gb-of-ram-in-a-computer-with-a-32-bit-os – Mokubai Oct 24 '10 at 18:11
  • As Mokubai mentioned, this question is a dupe of at least 4 previous questions regarding RAM limits on 32-bit operating systems. http://superuser.com/q/27086/ http://superuser.com/q/7964/ http://superuser.com/q/50138/ http://superuser.com/q/141537/ – nhinkle Oct 24 '10 at 18:38
  • As this has been answered identically so many times, I'll not add another answer, but here is the Microsoft link that shows the memory limits: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx – MaQleod Oct 24 '10 at 18:39

4 Answers4

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You are running Windows7 32bit version, which lets you use around 4Gb of memory. I suggest upgrading to the 64bit version

Eran Galperin
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Because you've installed a 32-bit version of Windows 7 no doubt.

jer
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Because you are running a 32 bit operating system and this is all it can address? Try upgrading to Win7 x64 to enable access to all of the memory.

winwaed
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There are two possible reasons:

  • If you are using a 32 bit version of Windows, the address space is limited to 4 GB and the top half gig is reserved for hardware access.

  • Some older memory controllers doesn't allow use of more than a bit over 3 GB of memory (I had a laptop with that problem).

Guffa
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