Vista sees only 2GB of RAM with 4GB installed

[truthkid]

To the OP:

You have an updated BIOS driver availible (noticed you had an 820, and about 900 of the systems on my old domain were 820s, all had memory problems). Now I stopped my witch hunt against dell when I got moved to Korea and we were running 800s, but back in 06/07 we had verified that Dell had ****ed up somewhere when we had posts all over the country slamming dell with phone calls, and mysteriously a new bios appeared and 256MB more of ram was recoginized after they tried to tell us it was the 32 bit XP we were using. I understand BIOS tells you 4096 installed (it did then as well), and 33xx availible (that happened after the BIOS update we got). I'm gonna make a few phone calls back to the states to my old office tomorrow (time zone issue) and see what ever came about the 820 issue. Just to validate you're not crazy, here's some more 820 frustration with memory addressing. I would think in 3 years they resolved it, but who knows. I'll see if we got any 820s lying around here to test a few ideas...

Drivers and Downloads D820&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=-1&impid=-1

James Hayes' Blog : Dell D820 4GB memory problem (Part 3)

 

[Secondhandloser]

no it doesnt work like that mate you only have a maximum of 3.12 gig to begin with (available for windows to play with)

add up your total physical memory and available physical memory and what do you get?

edit.....YOU ACTUALLY GET 3.14 GIG HA HA BUT YOU GET THE PICTURE

it all gets screwed up sometimes when you put 4 gig in a 32 bit system

I managed to get it fixed. Not sure what actually did it, but I swapped out one of the 2GB sticks for a 1GB stick, and the computer came up with 3GB of memory. Swapped it back out for a 2GB, and got the full 3.25 GB.

 

[truthkid]

Sounds like something faulty with memory mapping, I was gonna see if you could access 1 gig sticks to see what vista reported, in either case glad you're good to go.

 

[archie123]

no it doesnt work like that mate you only have a maximum of 3.12 gig to begin with (available for windows to play with)

add up your total physical memory and available physical memory and what do you get?

edit.....YOU ACTUALLY GET 3.14 GIG HA HA BUT YOU GET THE PICTURE

it all gets screwed up sometimes when you put 4 gig in a 32 bit system

I managed to get it fixed. Not sure what actually did it, but I swapped out one of the 2GB sticks for a 1GB stick, and the computer came up with 3GB of memory. Swapped it back out for a 2GB, and got the full 3.25 GB.

nice one the full 3 gig was always available but i suppose its better if you can actually see it , thanks for reporting back on your solution now we can tell others with the same issue to try that . the issue differs from system to system so much its hard to keep track of all the fixes