windows7 dont use all ram
August 5th, 2016
It depends.
Is your system 32-bit or 64-bit.
You need to have 64-bit to be able to use 4gb and more.
With 32-bit you can use max ~3,5gb or less in some cases.
To check right click on your computer – properties – and now check system type, what does it say.
If you have 4G, Windows will reserve a portion of that for normal operations. If you watch RAM usage, you will see it spike and then drop as caching kicks in etc.
I hate to be nasty (but I can’t help it with this case) – this has been answered SO many times that a Goggle search about the subject shows 4.5 million results.
And the first 2 pages are nothing BUT how/why it happens.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx
http://www.~ censored ~.com/board/music-computers/279791-4gb-ram-only-showing-up-3-gb.html
http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f210/4gb-of-ram-installed-but-windows-xp-only-shows-3gb-266089.html
In basic:
32 bit memory is limited in address space to 4G – and that’s 4 gig for ALL addressable memory – cpu cache, video card ram, lan buffers, main ram, etc.
Hardware gets allocated address values first (or the hardware won’t work); system ram gets address space last.
You can get around it with memory address paging, the PAE extension, but Microsoft don’t recommend it as the driver is incredibly flakey – blue-screens and mid-work crashes are common and just not worth the farting about,
The only real way to use all the memory is to move to x64 windows, that can address up to 16 terabytes of ram.
Going from x32 to x64 does mean a full install (it’s not just an “upgrade”).
thanks guys i might i might install 64 bit (solved)
here’s a link containing all the info you will need to patch your system PAE including a dl link to PAE2. I have used this on multiple machines and have yet to see a single case of either blue screen or crash.
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/make-windows-7-and-vista-32-bit-x86-support-more-than-4gb-memory/