RAM issues

[Sraigux]

I had just received my dell computer today in the mail. I set it up and everything worked fine. I later find that the computer starts freezing up, I go into the task manager and find that that my computer only shows 1.99GB of RAM installed when there is really 4GB. I go into system and it says that I have 4.00GB installed but only 1.99GB usable.

I am running a Dell XPS435T

Does anyone have any advice/ideas?

 

[rockyjohn]

I suggest you contact Dell on that one since it is a new PC and the issue may be unique to their sytstems.

If the OS is 64 bit you should have the full 4 GB showing - or close to it. Even if it only had the 32 bid OS, it should be showing closer to 3.2 GB. Which OS do you have?

Do you have integrated graphics? If so, I wonder if some of the RAM is allocated to it and so not reported with the rest. Not sure how Dell handles that.

I suggest downloarding CPU-Z and seeing what it reports.

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

 

[Sraigux]

Yeah, I have 64bit OS. And no, I added in an HD5770 as the video card.

CPU-Z also picks up 4GB of memory. But everything else only picks up 2. Even the BIOS.

 

[rockyjohn]

Did it have integrated video before you added the HD5770? If so, did you "uninstall" the drivers for the integrated video and go into BIOS and disable it (not all pcs require the latter - some do it automatically - what does manual say about yours?)?

 

[rockyjohn]

When you say Task Manager says only "only 1.99 GB usable" are you reporting what it says on second line under physical memeory as "available"? If so, no issue. See the difference on the next line - system cache. It is being used for the system - just not available for applications.

 

[Sraigux]

No, I'm talking about when I go into system from control panel, and yeah, I know about the cache, that's not it.

I dont think the computer came with integrated video. I can't be sure though, it came with an hd4350.

If there is integrated video though, how would I go about uninstalling these drivers?

 

[rockyjohn]

The question is very simple, did you take a card out before you put the HD 5770 in or was there no card there? If it already had a card then any on-board video should already be off.

In any case, whether card or integrated, did you remove the old drivers using device manager and then shut down before installing the new card?

Or more generally, did you follow the steps in your manual for installing/replacing a video card? If not I suggest you review it now to see if you left any step out.

 

[rockyjohn]

One other thing you might try, just to see what happens, is to take out half the memory - one set of dual channel sticks - and see how the it reads and use it a short bit. Then reinstall the the memory and see if it then picks it up - trying to force it to reinitialize and identify the memory. And then again see what the readings are.

To get another "opinion", you might run the free benchmarking tool at PCPitStop to see what it reports about the memory. Not sure how productive that will be but we are kind of flailing here unless someone else drops in with ideas.

http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/default.asp

If all of the above yields nothing, you might try reposting in the memory section, reporting everthing that you have already tried and reported here. It might get the attention of some memory experts that don't troll this section of the forum.

Please post your final status here with respect to the above before starting over in the other forum so there is a record here for all finding this thread, and perhaps include a link to that thread.

 

[Sraigux]

Please post your final status here with respect to the above before starting over in the other forum so there is a record here for all finding this thread, and perhaps include a link to that thread.

Sorry I didn't understand that part.

 

[rockyjohn]

If you decide to continue this in a new thread in the memory forum, as discussed in the previous paragraph in my post above, then before leaving this thread please finish off responding to the questions raised here and note that you are continuing this on another thread and include a link to that thread.