Actual Total RAM Size

**Afznotermi** · 14-10-2009

I have a Compaq laptop on which i had installed two different operating systems on it. Recently i had upgraded my 2GB RAM to 4 GB RAM. Now the problem is that when i check the ram during start-up i find the system total memory is only 3 GB. Any one knows why i'm not able to get actual total RAM size on my system?Does any body knows about it? Kindly help me out with above issue. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

**Amd Athlon** · 14-10-2009

This is an addressing limitation not a physical memory limitation. Go into your system properties and in the general tab it should say how much ram your laptop has. ALL memory (motherboard, cache and Video) must be mapped into the 4 GB limitation that is built into the 32 bit Windows OS. Also go to start then run and type in dxdiag and it should also display it there. The only other thing that might be affecting those figures is the amount of shared memory your using. You can also check this in the BIOS.

**PeterAGASSI** · 14-10-2009

While within Windows the computer may not show all of the RAM memory that it has installed if the computer is using shared memory for the graphics card. Check in the BIOS and see if you can see / set how much memory the on board video uses. The memory that the graphics card is using is reserved for the graphics card and is not shown in Windows as available memory. The amount of installed RAM memory can be verified by going into the BIOS:

1. First of all you need to restart your Compaq laptop.
2. Then you need to press F2 in order to enter BIOS Setup during Power-On Self-Test (POST while the Compaq logo is being displayed).
3. Then you need to arrow over to "Main"
4. The amount of installed RAM is located next to Total Memory.

**Joshua** · 14-10-2009

This difference between the amount of physical memory installed and the amount available under Windows can be justified by the presence of an area high in the memory. For that you need to go to your Start menu, then select Run, then you need to type MSCONFIG and then click on OK. Then you need to click on Boot, go to Advanced Options. There you can check whether maximum memory is capped or not.