windows not using more than 3.25gb(ish) of ram

[Guest stealer0517]

I have a "server" pc with 6gb of ram, 2 2gb 666 and 2 1gb 666mhz ddr2 ram in my system, the motherboard (i can't look it up right now, but tomorrow) seems like a fairly good mobo (its from asus but doesn't supports core 2 duos or higher). The ram works just fine in my friends old pc, and ive never seen this issue before.

But when i boot into windows server 2012 it says that "X amount of ram is hardware reserved" and i can't use it. in windows 8 and windows server I had this issue, is there a way to fix it?

last thing, i have a laptop that had 6gb of ram (now 8gb) and it says that 584mb of it is "hardware reserved" (this issue happend in win7 home prem and win 8 pro)

i googled around for some answers(so since you can't i answered and asked you're question), but I didn't find anything that had a solution that actually worked

please note: NOBODY USES 32 BIT ANYMORE JESUS CHRIST

also, 32 bit is limited to 4gb not 3/3.25ish

[xeks]

Is it not a 64bit operating system?

[lutzee]

Right, you most definately have a 32bit operating system installed which is limited to a max of ~3.2GB of RAM, this is a hardware limitation. However some windows operating systems have support for Physical address extension, to allow for more ram to be used

You can try this, but server 2012 is not listed (yet) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/desktop/aa366796(v=vs.85).aspx

[cafe]

like everyone else here said

not 64bit

[BCMods]

Definitely not 64-Bit :p

[zephiK]

install a 64 bit OS. note your CPU needs to support 64 bit otherwise it wont work.

[Guest stealer0517]

Is it not a 64bit operating system?

who would have a 32 bit version of win 8 pro?

or any 32 bit os anymore?

[Guest stealer0517]

Right, you most definately have a 32bit operating system installed which is limited to a max of ~3.2GB of RAM, this is a hardware limitation. However some windows operating systems have support for Physical address extension, to allow for more ram to be used

You can try this, but server 2012 is not listed (yet) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/desktop/aa366796(v=vs.85).aspx

64 bit, does anyone even use 32 bit anymore? i mean shitty laptops ship with 6 gigs of ram now

[xeks]

Is it not a 64bit operating system?

Seems like you do, mate.

[lutzee]

Right, you most definately have a 32bit operating system installed which is limited to a max of ~3.2GB of RAM, this is a hardware limitation. However some windows operating systems have support for Physical address extension, to allow for more ram to be used

You can try this, but server 2012 is not listed (yet) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/desktop/aa366796(v=vs.85).aspx

Take note, a 32bit PC cannot address more than 4GiB, which you have ass correct, but also the PC will reserve memory for its integrated graphics and other hardware, which can be up to around 800MiB. You most definitely have a 32bit OS, unless you can prove us different, if it is a laptop (unlikely as you said server and if it is you shouldn't be using a laptop as a server) then the graphics in that can also eat up to 2GiB of RAM for its own needs.

[Charlie]

Can you please provide the model of your motherboard and the type of RAM you are using with it? probably its a motherboard limitation, I have seen OEM boards accepting more than 4 GB of RAM but actually it will limit the RAM available to the OS. HP does this sort of thing in their desktops :(

[ErwinS]

If you insist you have 64bit then here is a link that will give you a few reasons why you could be having this issue

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/271388-30-25gb-usable-00gb-installed-help

[Guest stealer0517]

If you insist you have 64bit then here is a link that will give you a few reasons why you could be having this issue

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/271388-30-25gb-usable-00gb-installed-help

i mean even my laptop has 8gb but 7.5 usable... so it has to be 64 bit

also, bios is the latest and windows isnt set to limit ram (unless it is set to it by default)

[Ssoele]

If I'm not mistaken, 8 and server 2012 auto detects if 64 bit is supported and install 32 if not.

[Guest stealer0517]

If I'm not mistaken, 8 and server 2012 auto detects if 64 bit is supported and install 32 if not.

it is a 64 bit os, can we get over this already?

[Agila]

Some laptops reserve memoy for its video card.

As for your server, did you already tried unchecking maximum memory in the msconfig?

msconfig > boot > advanced options > uncheck max memory then restart.

[GoodBytes]

People are jumping too quickly to conclusion here.

I have a "server" pc with 6gb of ram' date=' 2 2gb 666 and 2 1gb 666mhz ddr2 ram in my system, the motherboard (i can't look it up right now, but tomorrow) seems like a fairly good mobo (its from asus but doesn't supports core 2 duos or higher). The ram works just fine in my friends old pc, and ive never seen this issue before. But when i boot into windows server 2012 it says that "X amount of ram is hardware reserved" and i can't use it.[/quote']

Ok, your problem isn't unique. The problem is that your motherboard doesn't support more than 4GB of RAM (or is locked to 4GB to provide support for some CPUs). Why you are seeing 3.2GB and not 4GB of RAM (this is the same as if you had Windows 32-bit), is very technical. But in brief, it's 4GB of RAM minus (more or less) you GPU memory up to a certain extent. There are reasons for why you see this. Why does it act like this? Very complicated. You need to take a university course on memory management and controller for modern systems, and on Operating Systems.. and that is even if the professor decides to go in such complications.

Refer to the motherboard instruction manual to know the option in the BIOS to enable or change to make your motherboard support more than 4GB of RAM, if your motherboard supports the quantity of memory that you put, of course. Depending on the motherboard, it is called differently. But it should be under the memory settings section. Usually it's called: MTRR Mapping.

If you don't see this settings or anything like it, and your motherboard does indeed support more than 4GB of RAM, make sure you have the latest BIOS. Back in the day, it was rare to see 4GB systems, so it might have added later on. Once the BIOS is updated, now go look for that options again.

last thing, i have a laptop that had 6gb of ram (now 8gb) and it says that 584mb of it is "hardware reserved" (this issue happend in win7 home prem and win 8 pro) i googled around for some answers(so since you can't i answered and asked you're question), but I didn't find anything that had a solution that actually worked please note

Intel graphic solution, and all dedicated graphic card from Nvidia and AMD that doesn't use its own memory, reserve space on your RAM, and uses that as the graphic card memory.

For example, the Nvidia GeForce 9300M, takes 256MB of memory on your RAM, as it has no dedicated memory.

I hope this all helps. Please tell me how it worked out for you.

[orangecat]

Its not a hardware limitation 6GB is by no means hard to achieve on any system run a 64-Bit OS.

[ionbasa]

The most likely cause is that the chipset and/or memory controller has a limit to how much memory can be addressed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_ba...erboard_issues

Try looking in the bios for options such as memory remapping or PAE, if these don't exist then your motherboard 'technically' doesn't support more than ~3.5Gb.

I say 'technically' in my statement because you *Might* be able to hot plug ram one your OS is loaded, assuming the OS can address hotplugged memory to possible bypass the hardware limitation. Note this only work for adding ram, never remove ram while a computer is on.

The reason this might work is because the ram doesn't need to be addressed / registered / initialized by the BIOS.

To my knowledge it works with Windows 7 64 bit and the server variants such as 2008. I have tried this method with my Pentium D 925 to load more than 6.5Gb of DDR2 memory.

Try at your own risk.

[Sauber-C10]

It is a 32-bit operating system! a 32-bit does only use 3.25 GB of RAM the rest of the 4 GB is used for overflow errors so you dont get a blue screen when you run out of memory! get a 64-bit operating system