I dunno.

AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ 2.20GH

32 Bit Operating System

You dunno what? I am telling you thats why you only see your system hit 4 GB. 32-bit OS's can only handle up to 4GB....

Though in some/many cases it will only see 3.75gb... like my 32 bit Vista Ultimate rig, and on the same rig, XP Pro shows only 3.25.

/sigh

I knew someone was gonna say this. Yes i know this ... BUT every system is different. So its easier to just go w/ the ballpark "4gb = 32bit" so you don't confuse people who don't understand.

Starkers has a point and it's good to let folks know so they don't think they have a problem when it won't use all 4GB. I understand 'ballparking it' but the added info can save a lot of folks (like me, when I first used it) some headaches.

Nothing against you 'personally', but when I go looking for info and someone thinks that the 'details' will go over my head so they talk down or ' ballpark' something, it's extremely frustrating. I'd rather have the details and then if I still don't understand, I can ask questions.

You might know this, but many do not.  The idea of mentioning it is to reduce/eliminate confusion for folks who see the 'ballpark' figure as being the supposed norm and wondering: "Why the f**k have I got less?"

Ballparking may have its place when counting the crowd at a football game, but in other cases it'd better to be more specific. So in the case of 32 bit OSes, it would be better to say that they can see UP to 4 gb of RAM, depending on the system.  Some may not because the system reserves some for itself: for example, when a graphics card uses shared memory the overall figure will be less.

I know that I'd be pretty pissed if a new employer told me my 'ballpark' salary was going to be $500 per week and my first pay only contained $400.  Yup, Po` is spot on, specifics have their place orright... in some instances, ballpark figures can create more confusion than they eliminate

Eh w/e....

Thats why basically is the point. Im not gonna argue on how i said it lol...

Hehe, who's arguing?

I currently have too much time on my hands, got bored cos I can't get out (mobility issues) and felt like getting lond-winded just to fill in a bit of time.

Actually, I wonder if that's why I can't remember shit these days, I have an aging 32 bit operating system upstairs that can't access all my memory?

Well I had to do a repair install to get my 32bit Vista Ultimate to boot up and, lo-and-behold, looky at what I found....

Yup, that is 8 gb of RAM.... and it is most assuredly a 32bit system.

Why... how come?  Well about a year or so ago I read an article (don't remember where now) on how to get 32 bit Vista to recognise more than 4 gb and tried it.  Although it did not take at the time, I'm wondering if somehow the repair triggered the change so Vista can now utilise the 8 gb installed... if not, it beats me how come

And no, it's not a one-off fluke... several reboots later and it still showing 8 gb, I had to accept it's for real

starkers...Service pack 1 allows Vista to show the additional ram but if you look at your ram in taskmanager you'll see that it is not using all of it.

Personally I would have gone with Linux if I wanted more ram, I am sure Linux systems are so often customized so hard, it probably take more than 20GB+ ram and then get an virtual disk and then install vista (whatever you want) and then run it.

Linux FTW.

Yeah, you're right about task manager only showing 3.75, but Ccleaner and my Winstep CPU monitor both show 8gb. Strange, that!  The other funny thing is that I had SP1 installed prior to doing the startup repair and I recall only 4 gb being shown in the system information panel then, so it's puzzling as to why 8gb is suddenly appearing afterwards.

Oh well, I'm mostly in Vista Home Premium x64 to access the installed RAM anyway, so I'm not gonna lose any sleep pondering it.

Like he said. Your system can "see" the 8GB ... what good is seeing it if it can't use it? I mean i guess thats cool that you got Vista to show it on a full 32bit but ... if it won't use it. Pointless.

That's why I mainly run Vista x64.. it sees and uses the full 8gb. I mainly run Vista 32 bit these days to use my webcam and a few apps that aren't x64 friendly as yet.

I run Vista Ultimate 64 bit as my main OS and run XP Pro and Vista Home Premium 32 bit in Virtual PC for those cases.

I also use Virtual PC sessions for 95% of the web surfing that I do. I really like the added layer of viral protection, I just close out the Virtual PC session without saving the changes.

I will have to look into that!  I mean, my surfing habits are pretty safe and I've not had a virus/infection for years, but you never know about drive-bys and those covert bastards who hack into respectable sites to gain access to users machines.... not to mention the sneaky, drive-by pop-unders that can leave crap everywhere, your registry and etc.

Apart from my AV and firewall, I also use Spybot's constantly updated 'teatimer' to immunise against threats... not to mention AdBlock to prevent unwanted ads and subsequent cookies they can leave.  Sometimes those things can be a right royal pain in the arse to get rid of using conventional methods, which is why I also use BetterPrivacy, a FF add-on that deletes LSO's... long-term cookies that can track users and are normally undeletable using Ccleaner and the like.

I'm still running XP SP3 with 512 MB 2100 DDR RAM and yet to see a BSOD after almost 2 years of uptime...

Great, now I know I will buy a 64bit os next time bcoz 32bit is limited.

Can I run 32bit applications on 64bit windows?

2 years of uptime, huh?

yes, you can run 32 but apps on a 64 bit os. most apps are 32 bit.

Well I do shut it down every night. But yes it has been almost 2 years since I installed XP on this pig.

Yes, most 32bit apps will run on a 64bit OS... and if I were you I'd skip Vista x64 (not that there's anything wrong with it) and go straight to Win7 x64.  It's much improved on Vista, is snappy and somewhat faster than Vista... also Win 7 is a smaller OS so is not eating into the extra resources of your better machine, thus leaving them for your apps.  I've been running Win7 since the 1st public beta and I am impressed with its performance, stability and reliability, etc... very nice indeed.

there's a major difference between those two statements, kona.

i agree with starkers. if you're not currently running vista64, skip it and wait for win7 64.

Yeah I see where I should have wrote my first post differently.

As for Windows 7 - I'm not upgrading. I'm not even getting Vista.

Um, like didn't you have Vista there a while back??

And what's wrong with upgrading to Win 7... it's the best MS OS to date?  Really, I've been running the Win 7 RC and feel it's pretty darned good, stability and performance-wise... and fast, decidedly faster than 2000, XP and Vista.  More importantly, it is smaller and less resource intensive than Vista, so you don't need a top-end machine to run it, just something decent and fairly reccent... meaning it doesn't necesarily mean an OS AND hardware upgrade.

At least try the free Win 7 RC to see if upgrading may be a later consideration... it runs uninterrupted 'til March 2010, but more importantly, XP support is likely to be phased out over the next 12 months or so.

I did have Vista but we returned that machine to the store. I'm wanting to get a new Mac with Snow Leopard. The new OS will handle memory better than a Windows machine and all the apps are true 64 bit apps.

My machine is not capable of running Windows 7. I only have a Pentium 4 CPU and 512 MB of RAM. Besides I am not interested in Windows 7.