The RAM shortage for hp pavilion 690-0024

[Staticj]

Hello,

It appears there's 2.1gb of the advertised 8gb  of RAM not available to use. I'm guessig it's being alloted for the 2400g's GPU. I noticed the most current BIOS is very simplistic and doesn't provide an option to fix it. There's no solution within the OS. This same issue was brought up before by another member but the thread went stale. 

I"m checking for possible solutions before opening a ticket. Thanks in advance. 

[Photoray002]

I remember seeing that thread also. There was no solution.

I would not hesitate and create a claim. HP needs to address it directly.

[Staticj]

I'm so used to social media that I just liked your reply but I hope "Accepting it as a solution" doesn't close the thread. 

Anywho, I figured it's only fair to look for a solution from the ground up. 

[Photoray002]

absolutely all good. If someone finds a better solution, hopefully they will chime in.

[Staticj]

I went to HP's support and got an online virtual chat rep by the name of Prashant. He remote accessed my new PC and made a change to the number of cores in the misconfig program. The system then rebooted and kept getting a blue screen of death with a frowny face emoticon saying that something was wrong. 

After rebooting several times, it goes into a repair mode that failed to fix the problem. Long story short, had to call HP support and was on the phone for an hour only to have to reinstall Windows. 

I spent the last few days installling and configuring programs only to have to start over again. Why? HP's support is really careless and I'm extremely upset with the company right now. I'm considering spreading my experience throughout the internet because I doubt HP will own up to its mistake. 

[Photoray002]

Im surprised that guy did that. I wouldnt think that would help anything.

If reinstalling Windows made no difference, I would think it points to a hardware issue.

Too bad you dont have some other ram to install to see if it improves.

[Staticj]

I tried the recovery process twice last night. Each session was two to three hours only for it to fail. Now, I'm not even at the very beginning. I have a machine that doesn't even work because of HP's own support team. Getting a new PC is supposed to be a fun experience. HP has turned it into a nightmare. Now I have to waste more hours after work today to deal with support to maybe get it working. 

I'm thinking this is a good story to share with PC magazines. 

[DynacorpLtd]

It is true, this memory is reserved for the iGPU that cannot be disabled from within the firmware, in fact, you can use the iGPU from within Linux, so it's definitely enabled, even though it has a built in discrete video card as well. This makes no sense what so ever, why can't the iGPU be disabled? At the very least, why does it need 2.1 GB of memory?

[Staticj]

I'm guessing HP felt their customers wouldn't notice the shortage. It is wrong to advise 8gb of RAM when they know that only 5.9gb would be available. So HP has not done anything to remedy the situation. I had to spend more time re-settting my new box because of the careless mistake their virtual chat tech support made. 

I'm really starting to question HP's integrity.

[DynacorpLtd]

I've done some digging into the firmware for this PC, and i've come across something.

There are three seemingly misconfigured Setup variables, 0x1C1 (Integrated Video), 0x143 (Integrated Graphics), and 0x144 (UMA Frame Buffer Size).

The manufacturing default value for 0x1C1 (Integrated Video) is 0x0, or, Disable.

The default value for 0x143 (Integrated Graphics) is 0xFF, or, "Auto",

while the default value for 0x144 (UMA Frame Buffer Size) is also 0xFF, or, again, "Auto".

Upon changing the values for any of these three variables, absolutely nothing happens. 0x144 should control how much VRAM the iGPU consumes, 2 GB (0x40) being the maximum value, 32 MB (0x1) being the minimum. However, upon changing it to any value, it still consumes 2 GB of ram. 0x143 being set to 0x0 (Disable) also, does not disable the iGPU in any way shape or form. And integrated video is simply disabled by default. I am assuming either HP or APTIO forgot to wire these variables to anything meaningful in the firmware, so these three variables do not control anything as a result. Knowing that there are three variables that do not control a thing in something as critical as the boot firmware for the motherboard is slightly troubling, especially if it was an oversight on either HP's or APTIO's side, considering the firmware is ultimately responsible for total control of the motherboard and its various onboard devices and functions. If HP or APTIO failed to actually code functions to handle these three variables, could there potentially be other things lacking in the firmware? Regardless, I hope to see this problem resolved with a future firmware update.