Why does WIndows XP think I have less memory installed than I do?

Question

I installed 2 gig of memory in addition to the 2 gig I already had. The BIOS says I have 4 gig total but Windows says I only have 3.25 gig. Doesn't matter if I swap the old and new chipsets from slot 0 to slot 1 and vice versa. Clock speeds are all within tolerance (no overclocking).

Answer 1

I'm going through this right now. XP is 32-bit, so it does not natively support above 3GB of RAM. There is a method of using PAE (Physical Address Extension) which will allow your software to utilize the additional RAM (but XP will still only show the 3.25GB). This is done by adding /PAE at the end of the boot.ini.

Here's a good article from Microsoft about PAE and the limitations of 32-bit XP.

Answer 2

This is because 32 bit Windows XP or any 32 bit OS, can only support 3 gigs of ram. In order for an OS to be able to address more than 3 gigs, it needs to be 64 bit.

Answer 3

The bios is telling XP how much memory you have. If you are on a laptop then the laptop/ BIOS has allocated the additional memory for internal resources. I wouldn't worry about it .

Answer 4

I found plenty of good possibilities here, too many to try to relist out for you. Give this a read though:

http://bink.nu/forums/8805/ShowPost.aspx

Answer 5

Try checking your RAM w/ CPUZ or Everest.

Answer 6

this website will help you with your problem or give you the solution to your : http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3340228&lang=en&docname=bph03886 xp i have windows vista ultimate so iam helping you !!!http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsxp/default.mspx

Answer 7

if you dont have video card its being shared by the system onboard grafics