Tom Mayer writes (clipped)

<<<< In any eventuality, a number of persons share your problem with reports of XP only using somewhere between 3 and about 3.6GB of physical RAM.>>>

well.... Dell will say we have "said so in our manual". they have indeed but in a very very vague/oblique manner.

the relevant portion of the manual for Dell dimension 4700...

<<<< Addressing Memory With 4-GB Configurations
Your computer supports a maximum of 4 GB of memory when you use four 1-GB DIMMs.
Current
operating systems, such as Microsoft® Windows® XP, can only use a maximum of 4
GB of address
space; however, the amount of memory available to the operating system is less
than 4 GB. Certain
components within the computer require address space in the 4-GB range. Any
address space
reserved for these components cannot be used by computer memory.>>>>

FWIW-----Venkat

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