Computer Issues Mishaps

[Stryder771]

So I'm at a whole new level of loss, I recently put together an old am2 computer for my girlfriend. I checked in my old Vista HDD for giggles and to see if the computer even remotely understands how to operate. Now here's were things get weird. I can fill all the ram slots on the board and bios will see the ram 8gb but windows only will utilize 2gb and msconfig only sees 2gb. Sometimes putting in different ram will cause the computer to power cycle without booting into the bios. Here's another issue, the bios screen is garbled and shows up all kinds of crazy but once the handoff to windows happens then like the os loads clear as day so like what even? Specs are..

 

Amd athlon 64 4000+ (still a great cpu imo)

8gb ram (ddr2 modules are mismatched)

250gb wd blue HDD

The board is the ht2000 from an old elite machines pc that I have

 

[Alesek]

how much ram does bios see? or does the bios not usable at all

[R3ep3r]

40 minutes ago, Stryder771 said:

So I'm at a whole new level of loss, I recently put together an old am2 computer for my girlfriend. I checked in my old Vista HDD for giggles and to see if the computer even remotely understands how to operate. Now here's were things get weird. I can fill all the ram slots on the board and bios will see the ram 8gb but windows only will utilize 2gb and msconfig only sees 2gb. Sometimes putting in different ram will cause the computer to power cycle without booting into the bios. Here's another issue, the bios screen is garbled and shows up all kinds of crazy but once the handoff to windows happens then like the os loads clear as day so like what even? Specs are..

 

Amd athlon 64 4000+ (still a great cpu imo)

8gb ram (ddr2 modules are mismatched)

250gb wd blue HDD

The board is the ht2000 from an old elite machines pc that I have

 

I suppose you have a 32bit version of Vista. Try replacing it with a 64bit. Because 32 can only see up to 4 gigs.

[Stryder771]

The os only sees 2gb out of the 10gb I have one four gig stick and three two gig sticks, and the readings from the bios are from before the bios screen was all buggy and weird

[Ace McPlane]

7 hours ago, Stryder771 said:

The os only sees 2gb out of the 10gb I have one four gig stick and three two gig sticks, and the readings from the bios are from before the bios screen was all buggy and weird

It's only reading one 2 gig stick either because you're using 32 bit windows which can't handle more than 4 gigs as R3ep3r pointed out above or because you're using mismatched ram which you're never supposed to do.

[Stryder771]

Even with the same memory in it shows up as 2gb and even in the 32 bit windows it will only show up as 2gb max ram?