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My mistake, when i first installed windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, i had only 4GB ram installed in my system. I usually have 6 GB ram installed in my system, but because i was checking my friends PC, i had installed my 2GB ram stick in his system.

Coming back to the topic. 2 days back i received my 2 GB ram from my friend and as soon as i installed in my system, Windows was still using 3.25GB Ram. I don't get it, Vista had no issues, but Windows 7 is just not accepting it.
As soon as i installed the extra Ram and booted the system, Windows properties showed me that i had 6GB Ram but only 3.25 GB usable. Any idea how i can ask windows to use my extra 2GB Ram ?

Thanks in advance.

There a memory addressing setting in the BIOS, the exact name fails me, but it needs to be turned on for Windows to see 4gb+

elmopuddy wrote:

There a memory addressing setting in the BIOS, the exact name fails me, but it needs to be turned on for Windows to see 4gb+

yap there is a setting called Ram addressing for 64bit OS - it's enabled since i had my mobo, i can confirm,i also checked that setting twice.

EDIT: As mentioned earlier, Window is a able to see 6GB ram but in the properties it is just showing me that it's using 3.25GB.

When you had 4GB installed, how much was Windows showing it had? Did MemTest show any problems? Are the timings and voltage of the two kits similar enough?

It's weird that it's almost acting like a 32-bit OS (but doesn't Windows lie and say 4GB even when it can't address the full amount).

What video card? Does the video card have its own video RAM or is it taking up system RAM?

wibeasley wrote:

When you had 4GB installed, how much was Windows showing it had? Did MemTest show any problems? Are the timings and voltage of the two kits similar enough?

It's weird that it's almost acting like a 32-bit OS (but doesn't Windows lie and say 4GB even when it can't address the full amount).

It was showing 4GB ram but as soon as i installed the video card driver, my system allocated some part of system ram to the card, So i was down to 3.25GB. I have experience the same behavior with Vista ultimate 64bit as well, previously i had 5.25GB showen in my system, where as it actually had 6GB. With Vista installed, i was able to take out 2GB ram and installed it back in the system and Vista use to start caching the extra ram, but with Windows 7, it just doesn't want to use it.

EDIT: I have 8800GT, please see my sig for extra system specs.

The BIOS shows the full 6GB?

You have enable "memory remapping". It is usually on by default on the current batch of motherboards. This wasn't the case when x86-64 standard wasn't mainstream.

The problem stems from memory table in x86 standard. The upper range of it was reserved for hardware addressing (3GiB-4Gib). Video cards can take up ton of it from their VRAM. That is why a chunk of your system memory gets "eaten". Memory remapping moves the hardware addressing into x86-64 range (beyond 4GiB). Windows also eats away certain amount for the kernel. It includes this factor in task manager's memory gauge.

wibeasley wrote:

The BIOS shows the full 6GB?

Yes, even in Windows 7 properties where you see system performance index shows the system has 6GB ram... I am stumped

I am currently using http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot ... uctID=2729

Should i reinstall the OS and see ?

EDIT: I have just downloaded the latest bios for my mobo, i will install that as well and let you guys know tomorrow...

Thanks once again

What motherboard / chipset is this?

axeman wrote:

Seems Windows 7 has a few wrinkles. Not quite the same thing, but I couldn't make a Windows 7 machine see 2 logical CPUs when I went from 1 to 2 on a virtual machine without reinstalling the OS - but going from a dual to quad on another (physical) box was fine.

Yes, because there's a uniprocessor HAL and a multi-processor HAL. The latter is good for any number of cores but the former is used for single cores, so you have to switch them when going above 1. These days though I thought we'd moved completely over to the multiprocessor one, but perhaps that's just because there are so few single-core (non-SMT) getting new versions of Windows installed on them.

I don't think some of the other posts really apply here, you should be able to use more than 3.25GB of ram for sure. The memory remapping has more to do with being able to use more of the first 4GB by moving PCI addresses into 64 bit address space AFAIK. If you could use 3.25Gb when 4GB was installed, you should be able to use at least 5.25 with 6 installed.

Windows is just going to report the total memory installed as recorded in the ESCD; what it actually uses is what it finds available to it when the BIOS is finished configuring things and setting aside physical memory as requested by the PCI(e) peripherals, so that (or some other setting in the BIOS) may be boxing in Windows. You might want to try clearing the CMOS to force a clean slate before trying anything more drastic like re-installing Windows.

UberGerbil wrote:

What motherboard / chipset is this?

axeman wrote:

Seems Windows 7 has a few wrinkles. Not quite the same thing, but I couldn't make a Windows 7 machine see 2 logical CPUs when I went from 1 to 2 on a virtual machine without reinstalling the OS - but going from a dual to quad on another (physical) box was fine.

Yes, because there's a uniprocessor HAL and a multi-processor HAL. The latter is good for any number of cores but the former is used for single cores, so you have to switch them when going above 1. These days though I thought we'd moved completely over to the multiprocessor one, but perhaps that's just because there are so few single-core (non-SMT) getting new versions of Windows installed on them.

I don't think some of the other posts really apply here, you should be able to use more than 3.25GB of ram for sure. The memory remapping has more to do with being able to use more of the first 4GB by moving PCI addresses into 64 bit address space AFAIK. If you could use 3.25Gb when 4GB was installed, you should be able to use at least 5.25 with 6 installed.

Windows is just going to report the total memory installed as recorded in the ESCD; what it actually uses is what it finds available to it when the BIOS is finished configuring things and setting aside physical memory as requested by the PCI(e) peripherals, so that (or some other setting in the BIOS) may be boxing in Windows. You might want to try clearing the CMOS to force a clean slate before trying anything more drastic like re-installing Windows.

Alright as suggested i will do that, infact, i am going to update my bios, so i'll update you guys tomorrow about it.

Thanks once again guys for your input.

Jigar wrote:

Yes, even in Windows 7 properties where you see system performance index shows the system has 6GB ram... I am stumped

Since Vista SP1 the reporting has been changed to please the unwashed masses that they are not losing RAM.

UberGerbil wrote:

What motherboard / chipset is this?

Jigar wrote:

I am currently using http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot ... uctID=2729

I could not find the memory hoisting/remap option in the manual. So you may depend on BIOS updates to have it enabled by default. That said with a low end board such as the S3G (not the D series), the chance of that happening may be low. I am guessing that if the remapping is not happening now, it was not happening back then.

FF, the board supports upto 8GB ram and i have seen upto 5.25GB in action. If bios update don't work, i have no option but to reinstall my OS again.
If that also don't work, i have no option but to get back to my Nvidia SLI board.

Jigar wrote:

FF, the board supports upto 8GB ram and i have seen upto 5.25GB in action. If bios update don't work, i have no option but to reinstall my OS again.
If that also don't work, i have no option but to get back to my Nvidia SLI board.

That makes little sense to me. If you can see beyond 4 gigs, you should have the remapping option done and allocated address ranges for the video cards should not eat into available memory anymore?

Maybe try reinstalling the video card driver again since it is the one that dropped you to 3.25gb earlier from 4gb.

Sad, bios update didn't work, atlast i had to format my C drive and had to give a fresh installation. Funny thing is after installing Nvidia driver, 800MB ram was not shared and i now have total 6GB ram for system.

EDIT: Not impressed with Win 7 here...

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but if your system isn't recognizing the full amount of memory that you have installed, and you have memory re-mapping enabled in the BIOS, try the following:

Go into msconfig, select the Boot tab, then Advanced Options. Make sure that you don't have the "Maximum Memory" option selected. If you do, unselect it and reboot. I've tried enabling this and setting the total memory to 4096 (4GB), but when the computer reboots, my computer properties still says 4GB total (2GB usable). After unchecking the box and rebooting, Windows now says only 4GB.

Dizik wrote:

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but if your system isn't recognizing the full amount of memory that you have installed, and you have memory re-mapping enabled in the BIOS, try the following:

Go into msconfig, select the Boot tab, then Advanced Options. Make sure that you don't have the "Maximum Memory" option selected. If you do, unselect it and reboot. I've tried enabling this and setting the total memory to 4096 (4GB), but when the computer reboots, my computer properties still says 4GB total (2GB usable). After unchecking the box and rebooting, Windows now says only 4GB.

Holy hell man. Literally have been racking my brain why my system was showing only 3.25GB usable of 6GB installed. I have Win 7 64Bit (Yes, very sure it's 64bit) Ultimate. Fairly new computer of this year, AMD phenom II X4. Asus Essentio. Dedicate ATI 5670 with 2GB ram. My BIOS was fine, it saw the 6GB.

I was one step away from doing a restore from my clean install image. This is a major pain, as I have quite a lot of programs installed. Takes me so long to put everything back (I should do a system image now as well).

Alas, I noticed your post, remembered that I set msconfig to boot with max ram (thinking this was helpful for booting purposes). I unchecked it, restarted, problem solved. Windows now sees all of the ram, Windows Experience reran and gave me the proper RAM score. Such a simple, simple solution. I searched for a couple of hours and noticed I'm not the only one with this problem. I hope others see this.

Thanks, even though you likely won't see this, as you posted way back in 2010. I registered an account just to say thanks