Windows XP Pro SP2 - 4GB RAM but Windows only shows 3 GB

[lopa]

I own 2 laptops at my home. Both of them have Windows XP Pro. The old one comes with 2GB ram and the new one has 4GB. I never checked how much ram both the system has. Last time I was just checking inside bios. I found that the new one has 4GB ram while in My Computer > Properties it shows only 3GB. It is not detecting the entire ram and the performance is hampered. Is this a bug or some kind of hardware failure.

[Theodore Long]

That is not a hardware bug. The problem lies with Windows XP. The OS comes with limitation of using 4GB Ram. Windows XP is not capable of identifying ram above 3GB. This is also a limit of 32bit hardware architecture. For using the full ram you will have to get a 64bit system.

[Cic!cone]

It is right. Your system is a 32bit hardware. There will be 4GB ram but Windows XP can only use 3GB. You can try upgrading to Windows Vista and there you would be able to get the full ram access. I had got the same amount of ram on my laptop. In XP it just shows around 3GB. That does not really put any impact on the performance.