RAM problem

I just bought some more memory; Corsair TwinX2048-3200C2 DDR-DIMM 2048MB (two sticks of 1GB each). I already had 2GB of the same memory so thought I'd upgrade to 4GB. Problem is Windows doesn't seem to "find" one of the memory sticks.. it says I have only have 3 GB. The weird thing is that at the startup screen it says I have 4 GB.

I've tested them one by one and they all work, I've also cleared CMOS once after intalling them. I have a ABIT KN8-SLI motherboard, and running Windows XP Home SP2.

Would really appreciate some help with this.

 

You will have to check and see how much RAM your MB supports My old Compag MB only supports 1GB, where as my new build supports 8GB, I think Everest will tell you, and it is available here at Major Geeks
Oh and WELCOME TO MAJOR GEEKS

Edit:- Tried Everest and I can find allowed memory size

 

Hi and welcome to Majorgeeks!

If memory (pun intended) serves me, xp (32 bit) can only handel 4 gigs of ram. Which I believe xp also considers the pagefile as additional system ram.

So, try turning off the page file, and see of xp can see all for gigs.

 

Link to everest!

http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

 

NVIDIA® NF4 SLi Based K8 939 ATX Mainboard, 2GHz HT, Dual DDR 400, PCI Express, NVIDIA SLi® Technology, NV SATAII RAID, NV GbE, NV Firewall, 7.1 CH Audio

Processor
- Supports Socket 939 Athlon64/64FX/64X2 Processor
- With 2GHz system bus using Hyper Transport™ Technology
- Supports AMD CPU Cool 'n' Quiet Technology


Chipset
- NVIDIA® NF4 SLI Single Chipset


Memory
- Four 184-pin DIMM sockets
- Supports Dual channel DDR 400 Un-buffered Non-ECC memory
- Supports maximum memory capacity up to 8GB

Well your MB will support upto 8GB, so I would try what Theefool said and post back

 

Your motherboard may support 8 GB, but xp (32bit) can't. So, if you were wanting to get all 8 gigs, or even have a page file and use all 4 gigs of onboard ram, I'd switch to xp pro (64 bit).

My method may or may not work, but, I've read that others on other forums have concluded that this method "works". I.E. turning off the pagefile.

I personally have not attempted this.

 

I can't seem to turn off the page file.. when I do and restart Windows it still sets itself to 2GB (minimum size of the page file for some strange reason).

I tried using Everest, and even if all memory slots are listed with all sticks it says I have 3GB. I ran another benchmarking tool called CPU-Z, and it tells me I have 4GB.

 

Ok, I found a post in another forum by a guy with the same problem.. and someone replied "32-bit addressing means you got 2^32 bytes of address space, and that's 4 GiB. Quite obviously you can't make all of that RAM ... system essentials and I/O (most prominently the graphics card's RAM) must map somewhere into that space too."

That's why Windows only recognise 3GB or RAM... I have 2 x GeForce 7950GT 512MB graphic cards running in SLI, so that's 1GB of memory.

So you're right thefool, I need a 64-bit OS. And that means getting Win XP Pro right?

 

You should be able to setup no page file, I've done it before. There is a "set" button, that you have to make sure to press.

Also, you need xp pro 64 bit edition.

 

Ah ok, cool. Thank you

Thanks to both of you for the help, and for the welcome.

Cheers

 

Motherboard Manufactors Note:- (small print at bottom of page for those ordering MB's or upgrading RAM) (Note 1) Due to the limitation of Windows 32-bit operating system, when more than 4GB of physical memory is installed, the actual memory available for the operating system will be less than 4GB; Windows 64-bit operating system doesn't have such limitation

 

Just found this article for reference for others, hope it helps, and I have not tried it so BEWARE:- http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/paging.html
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/V/virtual_memory.html
The two links above explain page filing much better than I could.
To disable it;
Start/Control panel/System/Advanced
Under the advanced tab you will find performance up the top, click on settings, then advanced. Down the bottom is virtual memory, click change, select the 'No page file' radio button, then 'Set'.
You really need to have plenty of RAM if you are going to do this, or the application hogging the most RAM will crash.
Good luck.

Think this is what theefool was looking for