Quick Help Please! Computer Posts With 3gb Of Ram In But Not 4gb!

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dude_56013

New Member
Pretty self explanatory...I ordered 2 x 1 gb of the same patriot ram that i have installed now so that I would have a total of 4gb..my specs are in my sig..i have windows xp 32bit professional corporate ed. I just got my ram today, but when i turn my comp on, it just goes to a screen that says what my video card is...top left it says X1950XT PCIE...and that's it..it won't go to the mobo splash screen to access bios or boot xp it just sits there..i've tried it with just 3 gb of ram ( 1 of the new sticks ) and it does boot, and i have tried each of the ram individually like that so i know neither of the new ram are bad! So basically am I stuck using only 3 gb of RAM then?...

if i'm stuck with just 3 gb total that's ok..i only pd. 40 bucks the ram and i'll try and sell the other stick to one of my friends for 30 bucks or something..i just wanna make sure it's not something i'm doing wrong before i freak any more!! thanks amigos!

Zac
 
With everbody rushing at 4gb when it isn't even needed for most systems you ran across a problem that might simply need a bios update or setting change there to see corrected. That would most likely seeing a need to change some setting from auto to manual like the dram timings. Another thought would be an older design chipset lacking support and once used a 3gb max board originally.
 
i would update my bios but i have no floppy drive on my machine...specs are as follows..pretty sure it's no hardware issue, i think it's because of the xp pro issue.....

Asus P5N-E 650 SLI Mobo | Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 @ 2.13ghz CPU | Patriot Extreme DDR2 800 (PC6400) 2 X 1GB RAM | Seagate Perpendicular Recording 320GB HD | Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950XT Graphics Card | Samsung CD/DVD Writer | Raidmax Smilodon Dirk-Tooth Case w/ 500W PSU
 
The bios updates from Asus simply run when you double click on those while in Windows. There are two types one for dos and one for all OSs generally seen at the support site. The all OSs version works like a winflash tool there.

It would be no surprise to see a 32bit edition of XP seeing problems with 4gb installed. XP was out before 3gb max was seen on boards then. Those running 4gb on the 32bit editions of Vista expect to see 750mb of ram mapped out to hardwares.

Whether in single or dual channel mode wouldn't be why you are being limited to 3gb of memory. It has more to do with limitations in XP's 32bit structure. A good article on the 3gb barrier seen even at times with the 64bit editions can be reviewed at http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm
 
as others suggested in another forum, my problem is now solved thanks to a bios update...i knew that it was not the "3gb windows 32bit" thing simply because my computer would not even post......so i got it workin now with all 4 sticks of ram because of a bios update..this thread is probably now closed unless someone needs other help
 
dude_56013 said:
as others suggested in another forum, my problem is now solved thanks to a bios update...i knew that it was not the "3gb windows 32bit" thing simply because my computer would not even post......so i got it workin now with all 4 sticks of ram because of a bios update..this thread is probably now closed unless someone needs other help
Click to expand...

The original bios version was obviously outdated then and needed the update. It sounded odd since while 3/4 of a gig are mapped out systems still run with 4gb installed. But even the 64bit editions see problems when going to install Windows with 4gb in. The MS advice is to first remove 2gb until Windows 64bit is running and then reinstall the additional memory.
 
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