windows recognizing but not using added ram

[scooter0775]

I recently bought a 4gb stick of ram to help beef up my system but windows for some reason wont utilize it. My bios sees the ram, windows says 10gb installed 5.24 available but when i had 6gb of ram in it it said 6gb installed 5.24 available im at a loss. my system is:
i7-960
intel extreme mobo
nvidia 560ti
900w psu
windows 7 ultimate 64 bit

any and all help appreciated

 

[mikeymikec]

That's a bit of an odd one. If you just have the 4GB module connected, what figures do you get then?

When a machine has a graphics card I wouldn't expect to see the 'available' figure at all. Did you add the card later? Does your motherboard have integrated graphics?

Even if it does that doesn't make its behaviour correct IMO. I think it's either a wonky BIOS or wonky drivers.

Could you list the memory modules you're using, whether you had dual-channel before/after/etc?

 

[Nothinman]

If the firmware and Windows report it all then it's most likely not a hardware problem. I can't imagine it would waste that much memory, but have you checked to make sure that there's no onboard video that might be taking some memory and if the firmware has an option for memory remapping?

Also, check and make sure you don't have a memory cap set in msconfig. Might even be a good idea to boot a Linux LiveCD and see how much memory it reports just to get a 3rd party opinion.

 

[jhansman]

Don't know if this from the gang in Redmond will help, but it might:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978610

 

[Motorheader]

Jhansman - the max memory switch is exactly what I was thinking as well.

 

[scooter0775]

just checked in msconfig and the max memory switch is what was causing it thanks guys

 

[mikeymikec]

Any idea how that happened? I'm aware of the maxmem switch but from the days of XP and previous versions of NT. It isn't something I've ever seen be triggered by anything else except me.

I would probably do a check or two with memtest86 as well. v4 works on >4GB RAM and is considerably faster than v3.4.