Getting Vista to recognize more than 3 GB of RAM?
Having recently purchased a new Gateway desktop computer recently, I was pleased to learn it had Vista Ultimate loaded on it. This is Microsoft’s top of the line OS so I was expecting great things.
Having also heard that Vista really sucks up the RAM, I purchased way more than recommended — 4 GB.
After firing up the PC and booting into the OS, however, I was disappointed upon checking Task Manager and learning that Vista was only recognizing 3 GB of my RAM! Bummer.
BIOS told me there were 4 GB present, so it must be a 32 bit Vista issue with the OS only seeing 3.
Being a programmer, I concluded that 32 bit Vista could only handle 3 GB of RAM. (Seemed to make sense at the time but I started thinking, why should it be a problem for this cool new OS to see all the memory in my machine?)
Because I was at Tech Ed in Orlando this week, I decided to ask the friendly folks at the Microsoft Vista booth about my dilemma in losing the use of 1 GB of RAM.
The guy in the booth didn’t really understand why it wasn’t working and thought Vista might need some kind of /3GB entry in the boot.ini file.
He looked around for awhile on Live Search and came up with a couple of articles on MSDN about modifying the boot.ini that looked a bit dated on the subject and not totally relevant.
In the end, he wasn’t much help at all.
I’m having a hard time believing I have to spring for a 64 bit OS just to get the use of all 4 GB of RAM (Couldn’t even NT 4 use more than that?)
Would love to hear from anyone with ideas on this.
Midniteblogger
