I asked about this on the Daz loader thread and next realized that was not the best thread to ask this question. I figured a new thread in this forum might be best. I repair computers, however I am no programer nor engineer. The average member on this site seems more educated than myself. So I was hoping somebody here could help me understand why the sticks of ram that tested good on another computer and is the same type needed for this HP laptop is recognizing only 3 gigs out of 4 on this machine only. OS= Win 7 Ultimate 64 Bit. Like many others the first thing many think is I have Win 7 32bit, but that is not what is says when I right click on "my computer"- it says 64bit. Also I made sure the ram was seated correctly and the memory tested good for all 4 gigs in another system afterwards. It's got me baffled. Thanks.
I have heard of similar problems on several laptops and if you google the problem ,quite a lot of hp laptops are affected .from what I have read ,its to do with memory channel addressing and is a motherboard specific/bios problem .check out your bios and see if there is an option to turn off automatic memory settings in favour of manual , or look up your model with HP to see if there is a specific fix ,or bios update . its almost certainly not faulty memory , I would be looking into memory speed settings in bios ....FSB Ratios etc.
Maybe the laptop reserves 1 GB to the graphics card/chip? In that case it makes sense to make 3 GB directly available to the OS. In any case, you do not need to apply any patch to the OS. Those patches are for x86-32 and not x86-64.
Thanks folks, once again I learned something new. I will check out my bios for RAM limitations AND Google for known issues with this model. 3 gigs aint bad in 64 bit Win 7 Ultimate, but I have 1 more stick to get her to 4 gigs and I want to get it there. Anyone else with ideas please post. God Bless Me (A Joke!)
probably a motherboard limitation.. I have 1 laptop and 1 desktop that can address a max of 4 gigs regardless of if its 64 bit or not... on my desktop, after the video channel and hardware windows are reserved I get about 3.5 gigs....
It's starting to look that way. I am surprised that HP would make such a new laptop with a 3 gig limitation, but based on my troubleshooting and the rumors posted in forums it appears this model will not run 4 gigs no mater what bios or software changes are made. It is running fine though, even in 64 bit the resources are very good. I have 3 Terabytes in an external hard drive box I built with a fan in it, but I find upgrading RAM is such a pain compared to plugging in larger external hard drives. I wish the companies could stick to some kind of standard for memory because there are too many variations for something users commonly upgrade. I used to wonder why Walmart did not sell memory boards because they sell a lot of other computer stuff, but now I understand there are just too many types of memory and likely many purchases of RAM would be returned by customers not paying attention and buying the wrong board(s) for their computer.
It seems this computer is a little older than I thought, it is a 2007 model. Nevertheless Hp.com has support for it BUT the BIOS is limited to WinXp or WinVista - Even WinVista 64 bit is an option. I have seen HP touch screen with a bios that limited the OS to VISTA ONLY- But I also understand that Vista and Win 7 share the same Kernal. So do I dare risk flashing HP's Vista 64 bit Bios upgrade on this? I can see an argument either way but naturally I wish to keep Windows 7 Ultimate on here. Ideas? Thanks.
hmm.. Well, if it worked in your case it helps me decide what to do. I take it you upgraded to a Vista, or Vista 64 Bios and your Windows 7 worked fine, eh? It makes sense I guess, in seeing that Vista and 7 are both using the same basic kernel, but I know that once I screw up my bios that sometimes there might be no easy way of going back. Thanks a lot for your input!
I had overlooked your post, I am sorry. I will checked into my bios soon and see if I have a means of toggling "Remap"', as I do not recall seeing that option in this bios, but I likely overlooked it. Thanks.