Thanks for the interest, John!
I checked the reference out, and I noticed that the thread was for an ASUS 55 motherboard, not my MSI!
Evidently ASUS is having a problem with their memory being "reserved" too!
I installed my new BIOS eventually (was easy once I figured out how), but it didn't help. Well, I hope that it is a firmware
problem that will eventually get resolved, because I want to give 64 bit Windows a try, and I've decided to stick with it. Maybe
I will also run a 32 bit version of Vista for a while, too, because a lot of my stuff is on my 32 bit Vista drive. And, I am not
yet ready to have to set up and learn a new mail program, but I have downloaded Thunderbird and will go with that eventually.
"Windows Essentials" was a pain with a huge download and enourmous license agreements that were very scary. Maybe it's okay for
someone who wants to use all those tools, but all I wanted was a simple mail program.
I don't recall seeing any memory remapping item in the BIOS, but I'll go back and check.
Dean Kukral
PS: Anybody considering moving to a Lynnfield processor should look into this. You might not be
too eager to move in that direction just yet if you want to run more than four gig of memory.
----- Original Message -----
From: John Sproule
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 10:57 AM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Memory not available?
I got curious about this issue and did some Google searching. It appears
this is not an unusual situation, though I've not heard of it previously.
This anandtech forum thread offers some insight into the problem.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=326801
From reading that thread, I gathered that there should be a BIOS setting for
something along the lines of enabling "memory remapping". This will need to
be enabled before installing Win7 64-bit. I looked through the online
manual for your motherboard and didn't see anything pertaining to this in
the BIOS section. Hopefully, your current or newer BIOS will have something
that is the same or similar to "memory remapping", even though the manual
doesn't cover it. (I see they've made 5 BIOS releases in 2 months,
suggesting that the consumer is their "beta tester" for this product.
;-) )
HTH
John Sproule
---------Original (Abridged) Message Below-------
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 18:43:42 -0600
From: Dean Kukral <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Memory not available?
I am in the process of building a new computer based on an Intel i7 870, an
MSI P55-GD80 1156 motherboard, and four two-gig sticks
of Corsair memory.
When I booted the computer into the BIOS, it says on the first page at the
top that I have 4GB of memory, even though I should have
8GB. In the bios, it "sees" all four sticks of memory. It seems to read
the memory properly per the SPD.
Then, I loaded Windows 7 64-bit software and looked into the System
settings and it said that I had 8GB of memory, but it also said
that I had "4GB reserved" by the motherboard (or bios or something). It was
only using 4GB.
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