Total possible Ram not recognized

toby84

New Member
Hi all,

My motherboard on my shuttle XPC died in April this year, and i've finalize gotten around to making a new PC over the weekend (yes i know, i'm slow! i've been very busy lately!)

So i purchased a new enclosure (Cooler master CM 690 Nvidia Edition), a new motherboard (Gigabyte EP45-UD3P) and PSU (cooler master Silent Pro M600 600W). The CPU RAM and HDD was still good from the last computer so i kept them.

Constructed it, booted it up to windows and it was slow at first as it was trying to install all these new drivers for the MBoard (im even surprised that it even booted!)

Anyways, i checked the computer before i reinstalled windows to see what had changed, and the RAM was showing up as 3.6GB from 2x 2GB G.Skill DDR2 PC1066 sticks. Which was fine as XP 32bit wont recognize the full 4GB.

After that i reinstalled the OS, installed smoothly, setup the OS for the first boot, checked the device manager to see what hardware drivers i needed to install. checked dxdiag to check that everything is working and noticed that it only recognizes 2.5GB of RAM.

Installed Grid (racing game) and ran as smoothly as the last computer did (but a lot cooler!), except running off less RAM to offer.

My question is... how come the older OS recognized 3.6GB from the 4GB and now it only recognizes 2.5GB??

I had a quick look though the BIOS and there wasnt anything jumping out at me that might be causing the problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time and help,

Toby
 
Remove all your RAM and reseat it properly and see if it comes back. Maybe some of your RAM is going bad or perhaps not compatible with your new parts.
 
On that try it stick by stick to see if it would boot up. You got lucky with the boot though, usually the OS on the hdd is tied to hardware codes on the motherboard so when you switch the motherboard you would have to reinstall windows.
 
yea i was surprised to see it boot up, and yes i did reinstall windows for the new hardware. it was on the reinstall that it didn't recognizes as much of the ram as did the initial install.

This is the new motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-UD3P rev1.6 http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=3137

This is the orginal ram ive got: G.Skill DDR2 2x 2024MB PC2 8600 http://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=57

I (thought i) checked the new mboard to check that it was compatible with my original ram... did i miss something??

Ill try to remove them both and replace them to see what difference that makes.

Thanks for your replys.

toby
 
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