Hi I just created an account here because there seems to be a number of interesting threads and such that all required registration to see, but I also had a problem that I figured i'd post since it seems uncommon. I had a PROPERLY PAID FOR Windows 10, by which I mean I originally bought at full price a Windows 7 retail key which has migrated with hardware to a registered Windows 10. (this hasn't been cracked or 'activated' or any kind of work around) It wasn't OEM or such because I paid for all my software back when I got it and I had more than one key at the time even. (I cant 100% remember if it was home or professional or what, i think professional because I was using it with again properly paid for adobe creative cloud at college and then for freelance) Since installing it to some other older hardware (clarksdale dual core with 4gig ram, would be 8gig but i cant make it see more than 3gig despite being 64bit windows for reasons i cant diagnose) with a fresh Windows 10 install and the properly recognized key from the win 7 era the computer I put it on has run horrible due to all the background crap constantly going. Cortana sucking ram, unwanted search indexing, Error Reporting thrashes the drive at least a dozen times a day to upload all my private in-RAM data to microsoft i'm sure, and so forth. So I tried several of the decrapifier programs like O&O Shut Up 10 and similar - but none of them EVER makes or saves any changes no matter what I do. Nor can I seem to disable most services or tasks, it's like my version of W10 is locked down somehow. I don't know if this is uncommon or rare or what but in frustration I finally ended up back on Windows 7 because the computer became completely unusable. (simply browsing firefox would go to 100% ram usage, then hardlock and hard drive thrash without even the mouse moving for at least 5-10 minutes usually with me shutting off in the middle of it in frustration) Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could narrow down why my W10 is locking out changes or is this something that has happened to others?
With a clean installation of Windows 10 with all the correct drivers installed you shouldn't have any problems. If you do it's almost always a bad driver or data corruption. I'm typing this on a 1.1 ghz celeron 847 netbook with Windows 10 and it works fine. If you have 4 gb ram and it's only seeing 3, you probably either have some hardware issue or you have an onboard gpu that's taking up 1 gb ram. Back up your windows 7 install so you can easily go back to it, then do a clean install of Windows 10 and see if that fixes it.
It's the GPU taking the RAM, I remember the bits about high memory being set aside for graphics cards back in the 32bit days. But even when I had 8gigs ram installed with two sticks it still only showed 3gigs on a 64bit install. I resintalled windows 7 and it shows the same 3gigs available on a 64bit install, though I made a separate topic about that because that seemed separate from whatever was preventing me from spyblocking W10.
In fact, this number is not 3GB, but 2.87GB You are right about it, it is so and it will remain so, there's nothing to change. It is set by the motherboard, BIOS, etc. of old 32-bit computers and cannot be changed. You're not the first to discover it.
I'm not sure I understand? It doesnt make sense to me since it was designed for 8gigs ram support in both hardware and software, even both previous generations of core 2 duo supported 64bit whereas this is 2 cores from the westmere/shrunken nehalem era well after which 8 gigs was established... the BIOS seems to indicate 8 gig installed but the OS'es do not. Windows also shows it was aware whether 4gig or 8gig was installed but does that "2.97gb accessible" or something out of it so i'm scratching my head how it can know it's there and not do anything with it.
If I know more about this computer, especially the motherboard, BIOS version, etc., then maybe I could say something more, but not at this point. Too little data. But it's true that on newer computers can make changes in the BIOS, but there can also set restrictions elsewhere, I don't know even what computer it is, how can say where or what to look or change.
Enable "Memory remap" option somewhere in BIOS to access more than 3GB RAM on x64 Windows (works for both 7 or 10)
I can't even remember the last time I saw that option in a bios it's been so long ago. The thought never crossed my mind to check for that.