Windows XP only sees 2GB of installed 4GB

Tim Danaher · **Joined:** Mon May 16, 2005 1:21 pm **Posts:** 166

When I do a 'Properties', XP reports it only sees 1.98 GB RAM, of the total 4GB installed onmy Mac Pro.

WinXP Pro, Service Pack 2.

Any extensions, updates that I have to install to enable it to see the full 4GB?

TIA,

micgaz · **Posted:** Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:51 am

Hey Tim,

I'm seeing the same thing here, 1.98 gig from 6. Afraid I dont know how to get windows to see the rest, So I'll just park myself here and wait for one of our XP experts to help us out.

You are not alone...

mic

James · **Posted:** Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:27 pm

Well your both doing better than me...it only shows 1.38 gig of ram out of 4 gig... But to its credit things run faster with that 1.38 gig on the Mac than they do on my pc with 2 gig of ram..

Michael Snow · **Posted:** Tue Nov 07, 2006 2:03 pm

Windows XP is designed to run on a PC BIOS that provides hardware info to the operating system. Seeing how Boot Camp is beta software, it may simply be reported incorrectly in the Computer Properties.

How much RAM does it show installed and available in Task Manager? What happens if you keep loading applications into memory, will it use more than the reported amount?

Tim Danaher · **Joined:** Mon May 16, 2005 1:21 pm **Posts:** 166

Mic, James --

Bummer.

Have alook at the last post here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... &tstart=15

It's to do with the EFI emulation of an old-school BIOS that's the problem.

Let's hope for a quick fix...

Or a Universal Binary of SketchUp.

Following Michael's suggestion, Task Manager shows:

Physical Memory (k)

Total 2075076
Available 120XXXX

Commit Charge (whatever THAT is)

Total 706XXX
Limit 4013516

But at least it's seeing all four cores.

RickPrather · **Posted:** Wed Nov 08, 2006 11:00 am

Welcome back to the world of Windows memory allocation limits, a place I thought I escaped from for good when I bought my 68000 Atari ST in 1984!

Tim Danaher · **Joined:** Mon May 16, 2005 1:21 pm **Posts:** 166

And here's some more info, for those amongst us who like chastising themselves with scorpions...

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pl ... AEmem.mspx

Apparently, even if XP can see its 4GB limit (you need other, more expensive versions of XP if you want to address more than 4GB), each app / process can only address 2GB of that 4GB. You can make each app see up to 3GB, however, by manually editing the boot.ini file.

Easy!

micgaz · **Posted:** Wed Nov 08, 2006 12:18 pm

hi Tim,

seems like I might have been following you round the net today.

I was trying to track down a vaguely remembered fix for the 2 gig limit.

you beat me to it.

I do not personally have the knowledge, or confidence to go messing about in the innards of XP. So I am stymied as well.

Even getting the ability for an individual app to access 2 gig would be a step in the right direction, so I might see if I cant get someone more experienced to help me with the boot.ini file....

cheers,
mic

Tim Danaher · **Joined:** Mon May 16, 2005 1:21 pm **Posts:** 166

mic --

Are you about 5' 11", wearing a shapbby brown trenchcoat...?

Anyway, for the moment, we're stuffed with the 2GB limit. Changing the boot.ini file wont give you 3GB of RAM -- it would just let a single app access 3GB of RAM, if XP could see the 4GB total.

Clear as mud.

micgaz · **Posted:** Wed Nov 08, 2006 1:06 pm

Quote:

mic --

Are you about 5' 11", wearing a shapbby brown trenchcoat...? Wink

How DO you do that ???

mic