How Can I Make All My Ram Show Up

firestarterut

New Member
Hey I originally had a 64 bit vista but I found it rather unstable, so I switched to a 32 bit but now its only showing 3 gigs of my ram. Is there any way I could make vista 32 bit read all my ram?
 
If you have 32 bit Vista, rip out 2gb of that RAM. 32 Bit can actually see 4gb of RAM, (according to SP1 overview files). However, in 32 bit, 1gb of RAM is set aside to be used with a dedicated GFX card (if one is installed). Unfortunately, in 32 Bit, if you or any process on your computer tries to use more than 3.5gb of RAM - 32 Bit will be even more unstable than 64 Bit and crash. Either reinstall 64 Bit (can't believe I said that) - or take out 2gb of the RAM in your PC (horrible waste!)

Which is the lesser of the two evils?
 
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Hey I originally had a 64 bit vista but I found it rather unstable, so I switched to a 32 bit but now its only showing 3 gigs of my ram. Is there any way I could make vista 32 bit read all my ram?

Thats all she wrote for 32bit Vista, if you install SP1 it will show all the memory you have installed, but around 3gbs. is all thats usable depending on your hardware.
 
in 32 Bit, if you or any process on your computer tries to use more than 3.5gb of RAM - 32 Bit will be even more unstable than 64 Bit and crash. Either reinstall 64 Bit (can't believe I said that) - or take out 2gb of the RAM in your PC (horrible waste!)

You don't have to take anything out. Microsoft has carefully written the memory manager to ignore anything above 4G, so you can install all the ram you want, Windows will just ignore it.
 
Oh well that really sucks. I just figured there was a way around it. Well thanks for the help guys. It is a waste of ram I should've gone with the better video card if I knew all that ram was going to go to waste.
 
What would you really be doing to eat up more than 3gb of Ram anyway. If you system never uses more than 2gbs and you have 8gbs installed it doesnt make it any faster.
 
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