P5W-DH Deluxe only seeing 3200MB of RAM?

[SHv2]

I lost power some time over the night and when I booted up the computer I noticed that it was only recognizing 3200MB of RAM instead of the 4096MB actually installed in the system.

I took out two sticks and saw that it was correctly identifying 2048MB so at least I know that is working.

In addition when I try to boot into Windows XP Pro it locks during boot.

Could this be a sudden RAM issue or a motherboard issue?

I am running the latest BIOS for the motherboard so there is no need to flash to a non-existent newer one.

 

[blunc]

according to a lot of people around here, a 32bit operating system (winXP) will not recognize/use 4gig of ram.

 

[SHv2]

This is at the BIOS screen. BIOS will be able to read it. Before last night BIOS would show 4096MB. This morning it only sees 3200MB.

 

[blunc]

sounds like you caught a power spike if your system isn't connected to a UPS, will it boot with 2gig of ram in it?

try reseting bios.

 

[SHv2]

Well the odd thing is that I have a second computer hooked into the same power strip and it's just fine.

It will show up in RAM as having 2GB and when I try to boot Windows other oddities happen. I can boot to safe mode but not just normal.

I have reset BIOS too with no change.

 

[okie]

PCI and PCI-e cards map their option ROM, onboard BIOS, frame buffers, etc. into the top of the 32-bit memory address range. The CPU can communicate via memory mapped I/O by reading and writing in this range.

If you aren't fully loaded with RAM, the mapping doesn't conflict with anything.

If for whatever reason the range doesn't map properly, the mask will be wrong, and your machine will most likely lock up.

Try this: in BIOS, enable "reset configuration info". If memory serves, that's under PCI/PnP setup. Then save changes, power down, power up, and see what happens.

 

[SHv2]

It seems to hang at the fullscreen logo now. I'm guessing the mobo is dead. RMA time!

 

[Canuck1]

I'm asking the board if this would work:
This is a suggestion to the OP, though.

Download and burn a Linux distro Live CD and see if it recognizes your 4GB of RAM. Use a 32-bit Linux OS, though, so you can compare.

It should work and if it does, then it suggests that the Windoze 32-bit OS is the culprit.

The only thing I don't understand is you seem to imply the 4 GB of RAM was recognized previously. I don't understand that part but for some reason, it was recognized, is it possible that your BIOS was reset to some default or something?

 

[Guest]

There is a setting called "Enhance Ram" or something to that effect. It limits the amount of RAM visible to the OS. ENABLED means that it will show all the ram, DISABLED means that it will only show 3200MB of RAM.