RichP Posted February 1, 2009 Posted February 1, 2009 Hi all just installed 4gb of ram in my laptop as an upgrade from the 1gb that it came with . How do I confirm whether the laptop can "see" all 4gb (it's in 2 x 2gb cards) or not? In windows task manager the total physical memory says 2,750,564 and I expected to see something closer to 4,000,000 so I'm worried one card's not working. CPU seems to be running at 100% a lot of the time as well - could this be related? Cheers Rich Quote
kitemark Posted February 1, 2009 Posted February 1, 2009 What year and make / model of laptop are you running? have you been into the BIOS and checked its recognising the new ram? was the 1 gig that previously occupied the computer 1 * 1gig or 2 * 512? Is it the ram the same chip speed as the previos stuff? Quote
RichP Posted February 1, 2009 Author Posted February 1, 2009 It's an acer 5100 laptop and I've installed "Crucial" RAM that was recommended for this machine by a "diagnostic" thing on the crucial website. The previous RAM was 2 x 500MB cards so the machine is used to using both slots. How do I check the BIOS please? Quote
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) Posted February 1, 2009 Posted February 1, 2009 Are you using 32 bit or 64 bit versions of XP? What size memory on the graphics card? (Unless its shared memory of course.) Quote
wacomuk Posted February 1, 2009 Posted February 1, 2009 i am sure there is a limit to the ram xp can see Quote
melt Posted February 1, 2009 Posted February 1, 2009 I was told that the limit was 3GB, but not sure of that Quote
kitemark Posted February 1, 2009 Posted February 1, 2009 When you press the "on" button on your laptop, you should for a few seconds be offered the option (all be it in a bottom corner in small white text) an option to press "del" or "F2" to enter bios, if you see the windows logo you are too late on boot up. this will take you into a pre boot menu where you will be able to see how much ram and what hard drives the system has attached to to prior to windows starting. Quote
kitemark Posted February 1, 2009 Posted February 1, 2009 But also see Here Where windows XP only see's 2gig, but the system should see the full 4gig. If you upgrade to vista you will be able to use all of the 4 gig Quote
RichP Posted February 1, 2009 Author Posted February 1, 2009 The bios says: System RAM: 633kb Extended RAM: 3967MB Video RAM: 128MB So, I guess that means all 4GB are there and recognised, but XP can't use it all. The laptop still seems very slow and I think needs a clean up - reformat and reinstall style. I guess it's a can of worms asking whether Vista is better than XP or not? Thanks for all your help Rich Quote
Mike H Posted February 1, 2009 Posted February 1, 2009 What do you need 4gb for? Adding ram won't necessarily 'speed' your system up. It will allow you to run more things at the same time without the system having to use the hard disk as though it's ram - which is slow. Defrag your drive and have a good clean with something like ccleaner and uninstall all the accumulated crap you don't need. Mike Quote
RichP Posted February 1, 2009 Author Posted February 1, 2009 I figured thast since RAM is cheap I might as well fill it up with as much as it would hold. I have defragged the disk and have uninstalled as much as possible - I'll try cc cleaner - thanks. Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.