Bamp

[Guest]

I have a dell pc which had 256 mb RAM. If i add a 512 MB chip, the setup info is showing the total but it complains that the cpu has a RAM limit of 256 mb, when it boots and i check properties it is showing me 256 mb
what should i do so that i see my total RAM

 

[jfurterer]

It depends on your Dell and what version of Windows your running. If it's very old, and it sounds like it is then there is nothing you can do to get it to recognize more RAM than it was programed or manufactured to recognize.

 

[average joe]

More info would be helpful...

It is possible you CPU cannot address the RAM with that density. Some ram modules are single sided some a dual sided some have a couple big chips some have 8 little ones. Even for the same size memory module.

Examples: the Biege G3 MACs couldn't handle sticks that had 1 big dense chip on them the needed the ones with the 8 little ones.

Dell Optiplex G50 Small form factor can only handle 1 gig of Ram but the towers could handle 2 gigs because the motherboards could only address 256mb per bank. The towers had 4 slots.

But if you are seeing the RAM during the POST memory test but not in the OS here's what might be happening:

Windows 3.1 in 386 Enhanced mode can only support 256 MB of ram. In theory, standard mode will go to 4 gigs but the XMS memory manger hymem.sys is inefficient and would cap out before 512mb could be addressed.

Upgrade your OS and you RAM will be there.