laptop ram problem

[Noob™]

this friend of mine uses this HP laptop-
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...roduct=3545691

the operating system was intalled from factory, and the laptop was bought from abroad. earlier it had 4GB RAM installed. couple of days back the laptop crashed due to overheating, then he had to reinstall os to use it again. problem is, after doing that, windows is showing that the RAM is around 3.3GB. but cpu-z or bios shows it 4GB alri8. can ne1 tell why this is happening?

[minitt]

4GB through how many sticks?

[Noob™]

2*2GB iirc. i'll ask him abt that.

by the way, is it something like, windows is showing the amount of ram minus shared video memory? if it is so, then why in previous installation it showed 4GB total?

[Master Chief]

He did not get an os installation dvd from them?If he installed from another dvd it sounds like 32/64bit os problem.It was factory installed with 64bit os which can use 4gb ram but instead he installed 32bit os which can use around 3.25gb.

[minitt]

@Master Chief

hmmm makes sense... he's probably on 32bit now...

but make sure that video mem is fixed at 64MB since 64MB is dedicated... by nvidia 8400M

if he exceeds 64MB for GPU (4m bios settings) it will eat up from system memory.

usually there are options like Fixed,DVMT or dynamic....

and even if the ram is shared with GPU it wont consume 700mb since the max consumeable ram (4 gpu) is 255 ( 319 MB -64MB)

so i think u can blame the os.

[Noob™]

this processor can run either 32 or 64 bit os. he's using 32 bit now. probably this is an issue with the os. i'll tell him to try 64 bit.. thnx.

[Muradd9]

2*2GB iirc. i'll ask him abt that.

by the way, is it something like, windows is showing the amount of ram minus shared video memory? if it is so, then why in previous installation it showed 4GB total?

But the link shows something different .

Product Specifications

Memory 1024 MB (2 x 512 MB)
Memory Max Up to 2 GB DDR2

It shows max memory up to 2GB!!

[Noob™]

hmm i didn't notice that before. but he has been using 4GB.. actually it came with 2GB and he later added another 2GB.

neways, bad news is, the laptop is broke now. it powers up but shows blank screen. i've told him to go for HP servicing.

[Mazhar]

Its because of OS change from 64bit to 32bit

it could also be that the previous version was 32bit vista too, but SP1, which makes it show 4 gb (non SP1 shows 3.25 approx)