I ran into a peculiar problem recently. I had 1 x 2GB DDR2 RAM installed on my laptop. When I tried adding another ram stick (again 2GB), Windows 7 started crashing. I would get the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) during the “Windows is Loading” screen.
Obviously, the most probable culprit was the RAM stick. And that’s what I thought too. But, soon I realised that Windows 7 was the only one having trouble with 4GB ram. Linux Mint worked perfectly with 4GB as well as 2GB ram and Memtest didn’t throw up any errors.
I tried swapping the two RAM sticks. But the end result was same. Use any one of the memory sticks and Windows 7 would work, but use both of them and Windows would crash. Apparently I wasn’t the only person facing this problem. A quick Google search revealed that several other folks were having trouble with this weird phenomenon.
After digging around for a little while I finally found the solution. There is a simple fix to this problem. This is what you need to do:
Plug in all of your memory and boot into safe mode. In order to do this press F8 just before the Windows boot screen appears.
Type msconfig in the Start Menu.
Click on Boot and select Advanced Options.
Set the Number of processors to reflect the your configuration e.g. 2 for dual core processors.
Manually set the value of Maximum Memory. Here memory size is specified in MB. Hence, for 4GB RAM you should set it to 4096.
Save the changes and restart your system.
After doing this, all the entire memory should be visible in Windows. However, you still won’t be able to use more than 3GB RAM on the 32bit version. In order to use more than 3GB ram in Windows you will need to use the 64 bit version or patch windows to forcefully bypass this artificial restriction.
Wow, so glad you posted this – I was getting ready to put a new stick of memory in my Toshiba laptop…lol. It’s a shame they don’t tell you this kind of stuff when you them them. Thanks again!
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i have same problem. i just follow your your step in this article last night, and whole day normal 🙂 but SODIMM only usable 3GB (although detected 4GB). i use win 7 64bit and Compaq CQ40-416AU (AMD turion X2 processor).
any ideas?
email me : ajieboy[at]gmail.com
This is a problem 32 bit systems normally encounter. But since you are already using a 64bit OS, my guess is that your graphics adapter is sharing 1gb of RAM. Hence, it is not usable.
I actually tried changing the number of processors on my windows 7 32 bit install from 1 to 2 (have an E6850) to speed up my boot and had all sorts of problems. BSOD, had to safe boot, etc. Ended up restoring my system image from a second HD (thank goodness I did that!). Have you heard about this problem before?
I haven’t heard about BSOD’s due to changing that figure, but I remember reading that changing the no. of processors won’t make windows boot faster. Its a fake tweak that’s all over the intertubes.
Looks like I fell for it and it cost me some headaches!
Thanks for the response.
[…] could cause a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) if the system had 4GB (or more) RAM. I managed to find a fix for that issue. But, I had another minor niggle to figure out. Although I paid for 4GB of RAM, […]
Greetings,
Does anyone know if there is a tweak to get Server 2008 R2 to do the same tjing?
Cheers,
Jimmy
Did you figure it out Jimmy? would be great if you posted here the solution 🙂
-Jean
This windows fix won’t work for me fully — it did stop the BSODs from showing up, BUT when I hit “apply” in msconfig, and then I go back into the BOOT Advanced window, it shows 3072!!! I have an NVidia 9400GT card that I assume does not share memory, but it is, is there a way to stop it from doing so?
I assume that this was case in Vista Ultimate (which, by the way, showed 4GB RAM despite being the 32-bit version), but it didn’t show “the truth”.
BTW, I am running a workhorse ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe with 4GB of Corsair Value Select and an AMD Opteron 185.
Oh, and on ASUS’s forums I found a fix that didn’t really work in the BIOS where you disable mapping (S/W and H/W) of 4GB and above of RAM. What affect would that have here? (It didn’t make a different in the reporting of the RAM that W7 saw.)
Any ideas on the issues above?
Thanks!
The cause of the problem is generally windows corruption.
If nothing works then ur last resort is
1.Create a sysytem image of ur windows c: drive(if u have installed windows in this drive else use in which u did) on an external or some other drive of ur hard disk. by using backup option in control panel.
2.install a new copy of windows(format the c: drive b4 installing). After sucessful installation… restore ur system by using system restore with the system image u created(remember step 1).
i faced the same problem n only this mothod worked after trying everything and even the microsoft’s solution.
I love you man, i couldn’t figure this out at all. and neither could any tech support. all said the RAM didn’t meet the requirements of the machine. Awesome your the best.
Hi,
i too get the same bsod too many times. i have 2x2gb ddr2 ram on 32 bit xp os.
it runs perfectly on 2gb ram, but if i add another chip it gets crashed.
from your tip of changing the memory usage in boot.ini , i cant change it to 4096 🙁 dont know why i have attached both the chips [2x2gb] but still it just takes 2gb max in boot.ini. If i unselect the MAXMEM option then it recognises to 3.25gb but bsod’s occur 🙁
can you please help me out?
mail me please : zaker78@gmail.com
thanks in adv
Regards
I thought this might work but i cant even boot up in safe mode with the 4GB installed. It just restarts like it was doing before….any ideas for that?
for Mike,
You’re probably using a customized ripped version of Windows Vista or Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit, like the TinY Editions. These have a lot of features removed, most importantly the HyperVisor features, DEP and PAE. You’ll need to use bcedit.exe to modify your boot parameters to reenable PAE.
You can’t boot in safe mode, so remove enough RAM to keep it below 4 GB. Boot up normally and you’ll be just fine with under 4 GB of RAM. Then run cmd.exe or Command Prompt, and enter “bcedit.exe /set PAE ForceEnable” without the quotes (of course!). Then power off, plug the extra RAM module right back in and Windows will now boot with the extra RAM without any problems and even start using it right away (though 32 bit OSes will only be able to use 3.4 GB of your 4 gigs available).
Sorry, that should be bcdedit.exe and not bcedit.exe.
Cheers.
Guys i found that win 7 64 bit crashes with 4 gb but is fine under that amount, the solution is to boot with 2 or 3 gb and update he graphic driver to 64 bit version and all your motherboard drivers, then it should boot all the ram you have succesfully, do not know if this helps the 32 bit version though
I respect your piece of work, thankyou for all the good content .
The advance boot options are for Debugging purposes only. Changing these values with not in anyway increase your performance because the computer is well aware of what the capabilities of your hardware already is.
So this is another fake ‘tweak’
Sorry Jean,
No luck. Wiith Linux, openSUSe and SUSE Enterprise however, I can “see” the 4GB.
Cheers,
J
Wow, sounds like a really simple solution but why does MS not make it an automatic detection instead of the user having to go down this route of booting into safe mode and manually telling the OS how much RAM there is?
Its just a PAE hack that is only beneficial if you use PAE enabled applications which are rare.
Its in no way a solution. 32-bit systems are limited to 4GB and this patch only adds up a 4-bit extension making your OS 36-bit. The real modern solution is to use 64-bit
it worked with 2x2gb corsair xms2 that caused bluescreen on win 7 64bit before. thanks. now will try adding the old 2x1gb 🙂
adding the 2x1gb to have 6gb ended worked. then I changed the max memory to 6gb and now its like it was before (freezing at boot). …
[…] could cause a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) if the system had 4GB (or more) RAM. I managed to find a fix for that issue. But, I had another minor niggle to figure out. Although I paid for 4GB of RAM, […]
I was having this problem on my laptop with vista. After days of being frustrated with thinking I had faulty ram or my computers memory slots had gone up I did another search and found this page. I found a patch and WAL-LA! Your solutions worked! Thanks so much!
I had this issue with an old Compaq laptop, and not one could figure out why, I found out about a year ago that they had configured the thing so it wouldn’t recognize added memory. I wonder if there is a work around for that now.
Getting into configsys showed that RAM memory was recognized, but the number of processors didn’t agree. When the next BSOD occurred, rebooting in Safemode showed in Event Viewer that multiple Code 41’s with a Hexadecimal coinciding with a power fault was a problem caused by a failing power supply. Many thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
This option only fuction windows 7 64 bits.