ram not fully usable

[mornplayroblox]

I recently bought 2GB additional ram for my old 2GB PC and it was 1,89GB usable ( it was fine ), but after i inserted my ram and, oh god, the ram usable is just 3,41GB ram usable out of 4GB, the system reserved only takes 100MB. Can someone pls give me a solution? I bought my PC at about June 2014.

[VH2000]

That's ok. A 32 bit machine can adress just 2^32 bit of the Ram. You need a 64 bit  to access more.

[TheOldMan]

Actually the "the system reserved only takes 100MB" is space on the hard drive and not system resources, but the 3.14GB available is not out of reason for system overhead taking the rest.  @VH2000 comment about switching to 64 bit is advisable for RAM above the 4GB limit of the 32 bit OS, however.

[itsmyname]

@TheOldMan -- Actually the "the system reserved only takes 100MB" is space on the hard drive and not system resources, 

I disagree that it is disk-space.

Before adding the RAM, there was 1.89 GB available, leaving about 100 MB of RAM "stolen" by the motherboard.  After adding the RAM, there still is that 100 MB of RAM "stolen".

Maybe, that 100 MB is used as a video-buffer.

Due to internal memory-allocations by 32-bit Windows, Windows can only use the first 3.2 GB of RAM.

The addresses between 3.2 GB and 3.9 GB are "reserved" by Windows.

[Prométhée]

Hello
and having the exact configuration would help a bit as well.

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[mornplayroblox]

i see, so that's why it is now 604MB hardware reserved?

[Prométhée]

Give screenshots of the parameters where you see all the information of what you have
Check the video settings
It is also quite possible that a quantity of memory allocated to the graphics card, is more important, since you have more memory installed.

https://www.crucial.com/support/memory-windows-recognize-4gb

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/the-usable-memory-may-be-less-than-the-installed-memory-on...

[itsmyname]

@mornplayroblox -- i see, so that's why it is now 604 MB hardware reserved?

Yes. The 32-bit version of Windows uses the first 3.2 (or up to 3.4?) GB of RAM.

The motherboard "borrows" the last 100 (128?) MB for some other reason (video buffers?), making that range of addresses of RAM unavailable to any operating system (Linux, 64-bit Windows).

What is left in the "middle" is reserved by Windows (not by the motherboard) to avoid problems within 32-bit Windows.