Memory addressing question? (Not another x64 type question)

[ktheripper]

First off I fully understand about addressing with x32 and x64 and 32 is only going to see around 3gb's

I apologize if this has been answered but I can't bear to read another "I bought 4gb of ram but my system only sees 3.2gb" thread.

Pretty sure the answer to my question is going to be bios related. I'm putting togther a quad server with 8gb or ram. I have two fairly new dell dimension 9200's and one I'm going to try and upgrade the proc from Core 2 6600 to quad 6600.

I ordered 4gb 2 x 2gb OCZ DDR2 800 memory. I know I know the Dell manual states this machine supports 4gb of memory but they just released a new bios for these machines and I wanted to see what would happen if I put the this 2gb simms in the machine.

First I found that it wouldn't boot unless I filled all 4 slots so I kept 2 of my existing sticks of memory. (2 x 1gb Kingston) Normally I have these Kingstons in the puter along with 2 512 sticks and the Vista recognizes 3 gb.

Now with the 2 new 2x 2gb sticks and the other 2gb of kingston, I boot the machine up and go into the bios and viola, to my surprise it sees a total of 6gb as it should.

However when I boot into Vista (x32) it only sees 2.0 gb. Pretty sure the os is only seeing the 2gb of kingston memory because should be showing around 3gb. I downloaded cpu-z and it sees 6gb.

Again, I fully understand that even if the os were recognizing it I would need to put x64 on the machine to see the whole 6gb but that's not the issue here because it's only seeing 2 and if I put the other memory I have it will see 3.0gb.

I'm trying to figure out why the bios is seeing the 2 new 2x2 gb sticks and Vista doesn't.

First I thought if the bios were to recognize the memory then the OS would. Since it doesn't I'm assumming there is something a miss in the bios that isn't allowing the OS to properly see this new memory????

If so anybody know of any hacks etc correct the problem?

With that said, I'm asking here instead of Dell forum because it doesn't look like it gets much traffic. Plus I doubt this situation is specific to this machine just because it's a Dell.

I figure if it is a bios issue, guess I'll just try to find a mobo to fit this chasis if I want to get something that addresses more than 4gb as I'm pretty sure Dell will never change the bios to do so but thought I would ask before totally giving up on it.

Thanks.

 

[Xtreeme]

do you have memory hole or memory remapping enabled in bios?

 

[ktheripper]

I don't see either of these. Bios is pretty much set to the standard settings that came from Dell. Not much you can do in there. With the memory, proc etc you can't modify anything.

 

[ktheripper]

do you have memory hole or memory remapping enabled in bios?

Revising.
Problem must be Vista x32 bit. Google on your key words and actually found some others having similiar problems. Several mentions, one i believe that Vista has a problem with ACPI or something to that effect in this situation. They rumored that this problem would be fixed in SP 1 for Vista. x64 of Vista doesn't appear to have this problem. I can upgrade the first machine to vista because of a driver issue with a card.

I have two of these 9200 that are identical. The other machine is running x64 W2k3 R2. I put the memory in it and brought it up and the Dell Dimension 9200 saw all 6 GB of the memory as well as W2k3.

Saves me from buying mobo and case.

Thanks

 

[dengamle]

If your 2k3 can see it, you must be running in pae mode, right? so it seems that the board has remapped all but 2GB ram up above 4G. And thus making it unavailable for vista

 

[ktheripper]

Dengamle,

There is no PAE mode setting in the Dell bios of this motherboard to change. If you are asking if I'm running the /PAE attribute in the boot.ini of the server, the answer is no. Also, PAE is for 32-bit os's only to my knowledge and x64 doesn't support it anyway. (Running x64 W23k on the server.)

Bios on each computer are default, again not really anything in the bios to configure much on these dells.

Also, your last sentence, "board has remapped all but 2GB ram up above 4G. And thus making it unavailable for vista" No the problem is I had 6GB of memory in the Vista machine, the bios recognized 6 but Vista only recognized 2046 mb. Even though it's x86, should have been in the 3gb range.


For anybody interested in PAE check out.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx

 

[dengamle]

Okay, I missed the part that your 2k3 was 64-bit. But a 32-bit edition with pae would do the same.

About the remapping issue. If the board has remapped your ram, so only 2GB is reachable below the 4G address line, then your 32-bit Vista will only be able to use 2GB. At least on Asus boards, the remapper remaps after 2 or 3 GB, depening on how much usable space there are below 4G

 

[dengamle]

Even though Vista has a pae kernel, it will never allow you to go beyond 4G. Microsoft calls it a driver issue, so they forbid the address space >4G

 

[dengamle]

You can use msinfo32 to check your memory map, and see where the ram is located

 

[Xtreeme]

thats true vista 32 bit cant go over 4gig cause some drivers bug out. If the cos wrote solid drivers this wouldnt be a issue but eh, how old are some drivers?