Only 3gb Usable out of 4gb Memory in Windows 7

I had a problem which I never addressed in windows XP. I installed 4GB of ram, but my XP used to see only 3gb. Now I thought installing WIndows 7 would solve this, but no again only 3gb is usable out of the 4. Here is the specs of my machine, any help is appreciated.

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Running Windows 7 on following:

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Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E7200 @2.53GHz

Installed Memory: 4.00 GB (3.00 GB Usable)

System type: 32-bit Operating System

Motherboard:Gigabyte mATX Intel G31 775 DDR2-800 GA-G31M-S2L

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Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT


Please Help.


Side questions for windows 7
1. Can i use vista drivers to install my monitor? because right now windows 7 sees it as pnp monitor, and on Dell's website my monitor drivers are not available for Windows 7 only for Vista. I have the Dell sp2208wfp
2. Can I use Google Chrome? the Vista version? for win 7?
3. Are there any tweaks that i can use in order to boost the performance for windows 7, it seems a bit slow on my machine.

Here are the results:
Windows Experience Index follows:
Processor: 5.9
Memory: 5.9
Graphics: 6.8
Gaming Graphics:6.8
Primary hard disk:5.9
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Any help appreciated.

Got it figured out now? Win7 ships with a 64bit version, and your hardware should be ok to use it. Upgrade to the 64bit version and fix this issue.

is this a 100% solution? what if i upgrade and the problem persists?

The 3 or so GB limit was a limit of a 32-bit OS. Was the same for XP, Vista, and of course 7. It will go away if you go 64-bit. For example, on the computer I am trying on, I have XP-32 (which shows 3.25GB) and 7-64 (which shows 4GB, all usable).

I run a 64 bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and have never had any problems with compatibility.. everything that needs to run in 32 bit runs great and everything that uses 64bit addressing runs faster!

http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/arch [...] oblem.aspx

check out that link.. hope that helps..

i am running a 64 bit version of 7 home premium and its says 8 gb, 3.5 usable...any clue beyond running 64-bit cuz i am there

Some motherboards require you to turn on a memory remap feature. Look for one in your bios.

I would overclock your CPU to at least 3.0ghz ~ 3.2ghz

1066 ddr2 really sped me up..

also raid 0 really did some great enhancements to my system

it is an hp board the model number i got from them is P5LP-LE


i looked in the bios for a memory remap option and nothing was there, but in bios it detect all 8 gigs...not entirely sure why windows 7 isn't recognizing them..

I post a link to the motherboard specification below:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc [...] 0864946&lc


Note in the memory section it says:
"Maximum HP/Compaq approved memory is 4GB"

Because your Intel 945G chipset is hard limited to 4GB MAX and does not support memory remapping.

The BIOS is not constrained by the chipset in being able to report more RAM than can be physically addressed. Software can read the module SPD through WMI or SMBus.

Nope, its a hard limit of the chipset. Motherboard is standard Micro ATX, all connectors are standard.

damn i can hope, any suggestions on a board that will support my processor? i am sure i will upgrade that at some point too

K, I found a solution... weird though...

I was using MSCONFIG to make sure windows started with all four cpu cores (i.e. msconfig / Boot / Advanced Options / number of processors).

I guess I also selected use max memory option as well.

In windows Resource Monitor 1026 MB was set aside for "Hardware Reserved"

I unselected the "use max memory" and now Win7 reports the full memory and the Hardware Reserved dropped to zero.

Hope it helps someone else.

I responded to the original problem. I tried all of the solutions posted without success. ...so my post was to provide a possible solution to the original post which wasn't addressed up until now.

I've got a 64bit OS... sorry you are correct that Ocean had a 32bit OS.

No, 32-bit Windows can not fully use 4GB of RAM. There was a change made to Windows to allow the system to report 4GB, but it still can't use it unless you have a 64-bit OS.

There is no way to upgrade from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS. You have to do a clean installation.

The extra RAM is completely useless. It's not used for anything.

The benefits of a 64-bit OS far outweigh the shortcomings. I use 4GB of RAM with 64-bit Windows in just about every system I build and the performance is always excellent. I don't see any reason to use a 32-bit OS on a new system. The 32-bit OS not only limits the total available RAM for the system to 4GB, it also limits each application to a 2GB limit. A 64-bit OS only uses very slightly more RAM than a 32-bit OS.

No, there's not because everything with RAM is deducted from the total. Your graphics card and motherboard components deduct from the 4GB total. You can never fully use 4GB of RAM with a consumer 32-bit Windows OS. Whether you like it or not, those are the facts. There is no way around it.

Heyyy I wanna try that... but in MSConfig boot panel nothing clicks. No buttons will be depressed. I can't access the Advanced options (??). I use MSConfig a lot to take the crap off my startup etc, but never tried to get to Advanced Options there where you're saying. What am I doing wrong? Cheers

That guy was using 64-bit Windows, so he was able to fully use all 4GB of RAM.

Here's the link:

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/softwar [...] usabl.aspx

"I have got Win7-64bit installed on a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P with a Q9550 and = 4GB or memory. 2xHD3870 ATI video cards

Win7 shows that only 3GB is usable... how do I fix this problem? = Vista64 used all 4GB of memory with exactly the same hardware!"

You don't have to take my word for it. I posted a link from the forum post. Look down a little ways in the thread and you'll find the exact link you posted above.

That's not true. I have a system with a 965 chipset and 64-bit Windows 7 that uses all 4GB of RAM. The 965 chipset is one of the first ones that Microsoft verified COULD use all 4GB when combined with a 64-bit OS.

Intel 965 chipset supports 8GB physical address space and supports memory remapping required to use all 4GB installed RAM with 64-bit OS. Whether the system BIOS implements support for memory remapping or not is a separate question.

It is true that 64-bit OS (particularly one that supports 32-bit side-by-side as opposed to strictly 64-bit only) will have substantially increased memory usage and footprint.

This may or may not be counterproductive on systems limited by the hardware to 32-bit addressing model, where you might only get 3.00GB-ish useable (or less) out of 4.00GB installed. There is a trade-off but whether it is still positive or negative would depend on a few individual factors.

64-bit isn't necessarily greater just because you have it. Many alleged "64-bit ready" applications are just the 32-bit application with pointer handling cleaned up and legacy 16-bit code removed so that it will be 'compatible' with 64-bit Windows. Doesn't necessarily mean it will utilize the processing resources of 64-bit CPUs.

Even where an application may utilize 64-bit, doesn't necessarily mean its going to be faster. e.g. how much 'faster' can Notepad or Wordpad get?

In the browser testing that shows 64-bit browsers performing better than 32-bit browsers, they have to open more than 100 windows or tabs in order to show any benefit. Who has 100+ browser windows or tabs open? I'm sure there are some people who do (and probably amount to about 1% of the computer using world), but seriously. I rarely have more than 20 browser windows or tabs open simultaneously.

Some applications really benefit from 64-bit but a whole lot of them just don't under typical mainstream usage.