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Is windows7 (32bit) stopping me?

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i have recently upgraded my pc, i bought an extra sata drive and some extra ram. the HDD works fine and im having trouble with the RAM i have purchased. i currently have 2x2GB sticks and since im about the to start using adobe products i bought another 2x2GB modules.

the problem i have is that the new memory modules work great but the pc doesnt want to work when i have all 4 modules in at once. when i have either of the pairs in alone the pc boots. but as soon as i try all 4 nothing happens. the fans work, green lights are going but just a black screen.

the mother board i have is a pegatron benecia 1.01 – which i seem to be struggling trying to find a website for.

thanks in advance for any help offered 🙂

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Clarifications

In reply to Is windows7 (32bit) stopping me?

Clarifications

HP

In reply to Is windows7 (32bit) stopping me?

Its the motherboard used by HP. Hence go to HP site and search for your computer model and type.

Browse this

In reply to HP

OR you can browse this URL:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01324212#N1401

And, of course, 32 bits can’t address that much memory

In reply to Is windows7 (32bit) stopping me?

With 32 bits, you get a total address space of 4GB. Some of the space will be used for different system functions. Unless you deploy some special memory expansion technique, your system won’t be able to use more than roughly 4 GB of RAM.

Then there may be issues around what your motherboard supports, mixing of different memory speeds and/or memory types.

If you’re lucky, a BIOS update or setting might enable some kind of support for bigger memory, but if you want to use 8 GB, then you’d probably be better off moving to a 64-bit system. (Inside which you may have a virtual 32-bit machine, as well, if you have the right licenses.)

You’ve got me confused

In reply to Is windows7 (32bit) stopping me?

32 bit os can only address 4GB of memory, after hardware and system grab what they want you’ll be lucky to end up with 3.5GB that you can actually use. The system should just ignore anything over 4Gb. It sounds to me like you have a memory mismatch that’s causing the hang up but it’s kind of irrelevant since 4GB is the max you can use in the first place.

OK I think I understand what you are asking here

In reply to Is windows7 (32bit) stopping me?

But first how much RAM is addressable by the M’Board? This is listed in the User Manual.

It’s no good sticking 8 GIG in if the M’Board itself can only address 4 GIG.

However with a lot of modern M’Boards that can use 4 RAM Modules you can not fit 4 slow speed Modules as the M’Board will never POST or actually Start to work.

While the M’Board can accept and use 2 X Slow RAM Modules it can not accept 4 Slow RAM Modules. What you have to do is fit the Higher Specification RAM which is faster.

So if your M’Board can accept 667 or 1333 MHZ RAM and you want to fit 4 Modules you need to fit 4 Modules of the 1333 RAM not 4 Modules of 667 MHZ RAM. If you attempt to fit the slow cheaper RAM the system doesn’t start.

This behavior started with the Intel P31 Chip Set and continues to today and is related tot he behavior of the Dual Chanel RAM Standard. These M’Boards need to have the fastest Highest SPEC RAM Fitted if you want to use more than 2 Modules. So for example if you commonly use 2 X Value Select Corsair Modules on a M’Board and want to fit all 4 RAM Sockets with RAM Modules you need to use the Corsair XMS2 RAM Type not the Value Select type.

And while technically you are wasting a small amount of RAM when you fit 4 GIG in the form of 2 X 2 GIG Modules what you are actually doing is making the Hardware work as fast as it possibly can. So you have Dual Chanel RAM Configuration with as much as the OS can Address feeding the CPU’s as fast as the Hardware can transfer Data. If you where to fit 2 X 1 GIG Modules and 2 X 512 MEG Modules giving a total of 3 GIG in Dual Chanel Mode the system would be slightly slower than fitting 2 X 2 GIG Modules and perform slower.

Also as already has been said any 32 Bit OS can not address more than about 3.25 GIG of Total System RAM so fitting 8 GIG to a 32 BIT System is just wasting money a small amount of Power and lots of Hardware Resources which can never be used.

If you want to make use of more than 4 GIG of RAM you need to change the OS to a 64 Bit Version there is no way around that. 😉

Col

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