Unusable RAM

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So I helped my buddy buils a pc out of parts we had lying around. We had a 4gb ram stick that wouldn't even show up so we figured we'd soak it in alcohol for giggles and see if it worked. When it came out I thouroughly dried it and put it in my pc, it worked. so we took it out and put it in his. when i put My 4gb dimm back in however, my system stats from control panel showed 6.00gb (2.00gb usable). Now I followed all the guides saying to type msconfig in the search bar and change the boot settings so that it wouldn't have a ram limit and it didn't work. every time I checked after rebooting it either reverted to the old setting or said there was no set limit despite the control panel still showing that there's only 2gb usable. So I tried switching the two dimms into eachother's slots, and it said only 2gb, so I switched it back and it said 6gb with 2gb usable again. I tried a cmos reset, and even soaked my stick in alcohol. All to no avail. I even popped it in my pal's pc and it showed that the 4gb was added to the overall, and yet unusable. 

I'm at wits end. Anybody have any ideas as to why this is happening, and how I could fix it?

[SuperShermanTanker]

are you looking in task manager look up the snipping tools in windows and take a screenshot you could just be reading it wrong or it could be just your motherboard but I need a screenshot to tell

[Electronics Wizardy]

12 minutes ago, DukeySpooky said:

So I helped my buddy buils a pc out of parts we had lying around. We had a 4gb ram stick that wouldn't even show up so we figured we'd soak it in alcohol for giggles and see if it worked. When it came out I thouroughly dried it and put it in my pc, it worked. so we took it out and put it in his. when i put My 4gb dimm back in however, my system stats from control panel showed 6.00gb (2.00gb usable). Now I followed all the guides saying to type msconfig in the search bar and change the boot settings so that it wouldn't have a ram limit and it didn't work. every time I checked after rebooting it either reverted to the old setting or said there was no set limit despite the control panel still showing that there's only 2gb usable. So I tried switching the two dimms into eachother's slots, and it said only 2gb, so I switched it back and it said 6gb with 2gb usable again. I tried a cmos reset, and even soaked my stick in alcohol. All to no avail. I even popped it in my pal's pc and it showed that the 4gb was added to the overall, and yet unusable. 

I'm at wits end. Anybody have any ideas as to why this is happening, and how I could fix it?

What windows edition? What cpu?

[W-L]

@DukeySpooky Please refrain form making multiple topics in different sections.

 

-Topics Merged-

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3 hours ago, SuperShermanTanker said:

are you looking in task manager look up the snipping tools in windows and take a screenshot you could just be reading it wrong or it could be just your motherboard but I need a screenshot to tell

I just looked there for the first time and it says 4 gbs are system reserved, Which is odd, cause I'm using a Black edition CPU (not an APU) and A normal graphics card...

[agent_x007]

What Motherboard are U using ?
What OS U have ?
What Memory configuration U have (2+4 or 2x1GB + 2x2GB ?)

Exacly what RAM U got (ie. models and serial numbers) ?

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3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What windows edition? What cpu?

Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit, Athlon x4 860k (black edition)

[Electronics Wizardy]

 

Try booting off a linux usb to see if its windows of hardware.

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3 hours ago, agent_x007 said:

What Motherboard are U using ?
What OS U have ?
What Memory configuration U have (2+4 or 2x1GB + 2x2GB ?)

Exacly what RAM U got (ie. models and serial numbers) ?

Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-H

Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit

1 4gb dimm 1 2gb dimm

Kingston 16000mhz

[SuperShermanTanker]

5 minutes ago, DukeySpooky said:

I just looked there for the first time and it says 4 gbs are system reserved, Which is odd, cause I'm using a Black edition CPU (not an APU) and A normal graphics card...

I'm thinking it either could be the motherboard or windows causing the problem

[agent_x007]

Go Single Channel Mode and see what happends.

Did U checked both DIMM's seperatly in memtes86+ program (for errors) ?

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3 hours ago, agent_x007 said:

Go Single Channel Mode and see what happends.

Did U checked both DIMM's seperatly in memtes86+ program (or errors) ?

No, I'm not quite sure what program you're referring to

 

[agent_x007]

1 minute ago, DukeySpooky said:

No, I'm not quite sure what program you're referring to

 

http://www.memtest.org

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3 hours ago, agent_x007 said:

http://www.memtest.org

I tested them and they're both fine. 

 

[agent_x007]

I'm guessing that when U run them independently, Windows sees and can use all of the memory ?

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With just the 2gb dimm yes, but not with the 4gb

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Bump