davie23223

I have a 3 year old laptop with 1GB of ram. On the specification sheet for my computer it says i can have a maximum of 4GB of ram (2x2GB sticks) I then did a crucial ram test and found out i can upgrade to the maximum 4GB, just to be more certain. I'm on windows XP. Now since in my laptop manual, on the specification page it said maximum 4GB of ram, will my laptop detect 4GB of ram on windows XP, or do i have to upgrade to Widows Vista or Windos xp 64bit? I heard windows xp only detects 3GB or something. But since my laptop manual says i can have a max of 4GB, will i really need to upgrade to those newer windows versions, or does my laptop have some special customized files in my recovery/installation dvd, since i used a customized windows xp copy that is designed strictly for my laptop, like you know the recovery dvd?

edit:
And if i do need to upgrade to windows XP 64 bit or vista, i am not going to, $200 isnt worth it for this laptop. If it only detects 3GB of ram, i still want to buy 4GB of ram instead of 2GB, so if i buy 2x2GB sticks and it only detects 3GB, will it still be running in dual-channel? If not, then what would be better, 2GB of ram under dual-channel, or 3GB non-dual-channel(if dual-channel isnt possible)

your help would be very much appreciated

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----------Desktop--------|--------Gaming Desktop----------|----------Laptop----------
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4GHz | AMD Athlon 64 3800+ | Toshiba Intel Centrino Duo T2050 1.6GHz
768mb SDram (PC-133) | 1GB DDR (PC2100) | 1GB DDR2 (PC2-4300)
40GB 7200RPM HD | 80GB 7200RPM HD | 100GB 5400RPM HD
ATI Radeon 9600 PRO 128mb | nVidia XFX 7200 GS 512mb | Intel GMA 950 128MB (Shared)