Vista problems with 4GB ram

[ranjan2001]

I have dual boot with XP pro & Vista ultimate.

XP pro works fine with 4GB installed & vista had been giving errors crashing BSOD, so I concluded that I as of now I cant use vista with 4GB.

Now I delete the BCDEDIT/deletevalue increaseuserva (that delets all my setting & should allow vista to only see default 2GB) but in system properties it still shows 3008 MB & vista crashes.

I want that 4GB remain installed & when I boot to XP I have a choice to boot & choose either 2GB or boot using 3gb switch.

Cant I do the same with Vista?
I want Vista to only see 2GB so I can boot to any OS.

[nish_higher]

are both OSes 32bit?
how many ram sticks are you exactly using?
32bit os-vista\xp dont support 4gb ram.and ur pc might hang in xp too-did u try to play some game\do some memory eating task?
there is an update for vista (32bit) to run 4gb ram.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777/en-us
intsall vista with lesser ram.update this and turn off.put back other rams and there u go.

[ranjan2001]

Originally Posted by nish_higher

are both OSes 32bit?
how many ram sticks are you exactly using?
32bit os-vista\xp dont support 4gb ram.and ur pc might hang in xp too-did u try to play some game\do some memory eating task?
there is an update for vista (32bit) to run 4gb ram.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777/en-us
intsall vista with lesser ram.update this and turn off.put back other rams and there u go.

Yes both are 32 bit versions.

They both are supposed to support & use max ram 4 GB but not in a really efficient way.

XP with 4 gb is working fine its the vista which is getting BSOD, I tried patching vista with that particular patch with 2 GB installed but it fails, I then tried with 4GB the same patch but it again fails.

So the patch is not working either so its ok for now but I want to boot vista & only use 2GB.

How to do that?

[nish_higher]

run a memtest

plz tell about ur rams--u using 4 sticks of transcend 800mhz?

also any 32 bit os wont even recognize 4gb ram.it would show something less than it-3.5gb/3gb..etc.only 64bit os are meant to take advantage of ram-u can hve upto 128gb

[ranjan2001]

Originally Posted by nish_higher

run a memtest

plz tell about ur rams--u using 4 sticks of transcend 800mhz?

also any 32 bit os wont even recognize 4gb ram.it would show something less than it-3.5gb/3gb..etc.only 64bit os are meant to take advantage of ram-u can hve upto 128gb

Memtest does not give any errors
I have 4 sticks of transcend 800mhz boughtin seperate times as 2gb each pair.

Here is the old thread after which I gave up
Vista ultimate BSOD crashing on 4GB ram

Out of this experience I confirm XP sp2 wont show you full 4gb but still able to use it, I actually use 2.5GB for photoshop & let the 1.5 for the OS & now I can easily do all kind of multi tasking without hanging the comp, though not all application can work with 4GB hence I often have to switch to the 2gb version which I made the changes to boot.ini

The speed gain wont be much significant with 4GB but the application can now share much larger share of ram & that helps. 32 bit OS do not manage well the 4GB hence its recommended to use 64bit OS but ithasits own share of driver problems.

[nish_higher]

from ur other thread----

maybe this is the answer.

reset ur bios to default and try using 4gb of ram.its got nothing to do with some installation of vista or any OS.its only some driver conflict-(minimal chance since xp works good like u said) or ur ram incompatibility or just ur overclocking.

and btw i have 4*1 gb kingston 800.vista 32 shows 3.5gb.and i cant go beyond using 3.2gb in any of the softwares after which my pc becomes too slow and eventually i have to close my open programs.

[ranjan2001]

AS of now I am not doing any OCing & the BIOS is at default setting except the memory Remap feature (switched ON) which allows to see full 4GB ram else it wont work.

Driver conflict was my 1st thought & I update my graphics card to the latest, I am not using much of pheriphals with Vista test installation but it still remains the mystery as to why I keep getting different BSOD every time.

[nish_higher]

i just googled.many users have reported that error on ocforums\toms hardware and look around u might find that some users also report pc bsod\crash when memory remapping feature is on.and some users report the same problem in vista x64.

[ranjan2001]

Originally Posted by nish_higher

and btw i have 4*1 gb kingston 800.vista 32 shows 3.5gb.and i cant go beyond using 3.2gb in any of the softwares after which my pc becomes too slow and eventually i have to close my open programs.

You are right
its not recommended to allocate full 4gb to any application, as you have noticed that when u allocate 3.5gb vista chokes & slows down because Vista itself requires 1GB of ram to function, so its insane to allocate all ram not leaving any thing for the OS.

From this link you will know why it wont show full 4gb
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605

if you have a video card that has 256 MB of onboard memory, that memory must be mapped within the first 4 GB of address space. If 4 GB of system memory is already installed, part of that address space must be reserved by the graphics memory mapping. Graphics memory mapping overwrites a part of the system memory. These conditions reduce the total amount of system memory that is available to the operating system.