Xp only showing 2.75 GB of ram for 4GB

[aileen]

I have recently installed 4gb of ram in Windows XP 32bit Operating System wiht SP2. But windows is only showing 2.75gb under system properties? I was thinking that it should be showing me above 3gb of ram? Can anyone tell me why is it not showing me the whole ram? Thanks.

[Russell]

I am thinking that it could be varying, is your system sharing ram for video memory as well?

[techman]

Usually the amount of ram varies depending upon the hardware. It should be usually around 3gb but can be even less that what you are seeing. Actually every 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) have a 4GB address space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.

[aileen]

Actually I do have a very memory intensive program and also since I am a developed I have multiple instance of Visual Studio open and Office 2007 or should I say Outlook 2007 is a memory hog application.

[Tomthegreat]

When you are using 64bit version of Windows XP then you must not have any issues unless you have bad memory or a bad motherboard. Since you are using 32bit version of Windows XP which will act like you are describing as it cannot see the entire 4gb of memory. So, upgrade to 64bit operating system and you will see all the 4gb ram used in your system.