twodownzero Posted December 25, 2010 Share Posted December 25, 2010 I've had 64 bit processors for years, but I've never bought a 64 bit operating system. I've finally reached the point where 32 bit won't support the RAM I'm running alongside my video card and I'm wondering if you guys have any suggestions. I can get an "upgrade" to 64 bit Windows 7 for $8 through my school because I'm a student. The only problem is that one must own a copy of Vista 64 bit in order to use it. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to pull this off without buying a full licensed copy? To me it seems like it'd be a waste to spend $150 on Windows 7 home or something just to "upgrade." That is, unless there's some other method by which to get a license of which I'm unaware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyburg Posted December 25, 2010 Share Posted December 25, 2010 Check with your school to see if you can get the vista operating system also. Sometimes they will have the full copy you can buy cheap. If not, new computers are getting cheaper and might be cheaper to just buy a new one. Weigh the odds and go from there. Full copy of the operating system, 150 or so then the upgrade. New emachine 200.00. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skydiver Posted December 25, 2010 Share Posted December 25, 2010 If you bought Vista, the box contains both the 32-bit and 64-bit discs. There is only one licence key in the box for both. I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but as I recall, you can't install 32-bit Vista and then upgrade in place to 64-bit Windows 7. You'll have to start out with 64-bit Vista. On the other hand, I believe that with the File and Settings Transfer Wizard, you can "backup" most of your files and settings on the 32-bit OS, install Windows 7 clean, and then "transfer/restore" once you've got Windows 7 running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twodownzero Posted December 25, 2010 Author Share Posted December 25, 2010 (edited) Check with your school to see if you can get the vista operating system also. Sometimes they will have the full copy you can buy cheap. If not, new computers are getting cheaper and might be cheaper to just buy a new one. Weigh the odds and go from there. Full copy of the operating system, 150 or so then the upgrade. New emachine 200.00. I just spent $300 upgrading this one, so I doubt I'm going to throw all of my new parts in the trash. One of my friends told me a path whereby I might be able to "upgrade" to a full copy. I've got to get the $8 copy of the DVD and try it out and see what happens. All of my files are on a separate hard drive, so I'm good to go on that. Edited December 25, 2010 by twodownzero Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twodownzero Posted January 2, 2011 Author Share Posted January 2, 2011 So I upgraded....and I can't get windows to use my 4gb of memory, still. I've scoured to the corners of the internet, and the only possibility is that my bios lacks a "memory remapping" feature. It's a brand new MSI H55-G43. I'm not sure why I can't seem to find the setting, but I'm off to mess with my bios some more...before I'm stuck in 2 gb land forever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blind bat Posted January 2, 2011 Share Posted January 2, 2011 Open whatever they call the start menu these days. Right click->Properties on "Computer". Make sure it shows that you are running a 64bit OS. I'm somewhat confused about what you mean by, "won't support the RAM I'm running alongside my video card?" How much memory do you have installed? Does the Bios confirm that amount? Does your rig use an on-board video chip that uses the motherboard's RAM instead of dedicated video ram? The amount of RAM available to an OS can vary based on various Bios features however, if you have 8GB of RAM and the OS shows <4GB something is wrong. I'd download a x86_64 Linux live CD (Ubuntu) and see if it shows the correct amount of RAM. If Linux sees the full amount of RAM there is probably something up with your Windows install. MSI is a good brand. You might want to check to see if there is a Bios update available but I doubt that is the issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skydiver Posted January 2, 2011 Share Posted January 2, 2011 You can also burn an ISO of MemTest86 without installing Windows or Linux. This is usually the first thing I run after putting together a new system to reassure myself that I didn't pick up too much static while my cats "helped" me during assembly. http://www.memtest.org/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DownUnder Posted January 2, 2011 Share Posted January 2, 2011 Maybe an obvious question, but are you using either both the black or both the blue RAM slots? You can't use one black and one blue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twodownzero Posted January 2, 2011 Author Share Posted January 2, 2011 (edited) 4 gb of RAM is installed in both of the black slots. Bios shows 4 gb installed. Onboard video is disabled; video card has 1 gb of video memory OS shows 64 bit. Bios shows 4 gb ram. OS shows 4.00 gb (1.96 usable) Resource monitor shows 2 gb of ram as "system reserved" Bios is newest version available. I flashed it just to make sure, no change. Will run memtest and boot into ubuntu later to see what it does. Edited January 2, 2011 by twodownzero Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DownUnder Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 (edited) 4 things you might try - 1.Click on Start > type msconfig in the search box > click on msconfig in the programs list Click on the BOOT tab Click on ADVANCED OPTIONS Untick MAXIMUM MEMORY if it is ticked Restart the computer 2. Try putting both the memory strips into the blue slots and see if that changes things. 3. Read the info contained in this link, could be your video card or other things messing things up. Even though cards have onboard memory Windows might still be reserving memory addresses for these cards and this can reduce your available RAM. Try taking the video card out and enabling onboard video and see if there is a difference in reported RAM after the change. If there is, that is a clue to what is going on. http://superuser.com/questions/56157/why-is-windows-7-marking-all-my-extra-ram-as-hardware-reserved 4. If you try everything else, think about who installed the CPU onto the board. If it was not an experienced technician it is very easy to bend one pin slightly out of alignment and this can create the problem you have described. Note: I wouldn't be pulling the CPU off the board until I had checked EVERYTHING else first! I also would not do this if the install was done by and experienced technician, but if you did it yourself it might be worth checking. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/267749-30-windows-usable Edited January 3, 2011 by DownUnder Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twodownzero Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 (edited) 1. forgot to mention that I already checked that. Makes no difference if unchecked or checked. 2. Computer won't boot at all with RAM in the blue slots. The chipset requires that the black slots be populated first before it recognizes any RAM in the blue slots. 3. Will check right now. EDIT (I forgot that this CPU doesn't support onboard video, so I can't do that. I can try a different video card and see what happens). 4. Already removed, checked, and reseated. no change. Edited January 3, 2011 by twodownzero Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz-0 Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 Crank up windows task manager. Click the performance tab. Look at the physical memory section. if it says 4029 under total, then your 4gb is visible to the os. available will say 210 because windows 7 works differently than previous versions and caches frequently/recently used executables to make launching them faster. By default, it seems to take a slightly larger than 2gb chunk if available. You will really notice the caching improve performance when launching java based apps (I have an app called dbvisualizer that launches several times faster going from vista 64bit to 7 64 bit on the same hardware), or just very large binaries (like photoshop). From your description, your computer is fine. Windows 7 just works a bit differently than previous version with regard to memory management. IIRC when you start actually making requests for more than 2gb of memory, it will start flushing things form the cache and hand the memory back to the system to use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twodownzero Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 Crank up windows task manager. Click the performance tab. Look at the physical memory section. if it says 4029 under total, then your 4gb is visible to the os. available will say 210 because windows 7 works differently than previous versions and caches frequently/recently used executables to make launching them faster. By default, it seems to take a slightly larger than 2gb chunk if available. You will really notice the caching improve performance when launching java based apps (I have an app called dbvisualizer that launches several times faster going from vista 64bit to 7 64 bit on the same hardware), or just very large binaries (like photoshop). From your description, your computer is fine. Windows 7 just works a bit differently than previous version with regard to memory management. IIRC when you start actually making requests for more than 2gb of memory, it will start flushing things form the cache and hand the memory back to the system to use. It doesn't say 4029; it says 2007. I'm starting to think that this whole 64 bit thing is a scam. They sell you all this hardware, and then fail to tell you that software glitches can make it all worthless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twodownzero Posted February 3, 2011 Author Share Posted February 3, 2011 So I finally figured out my problem--the motherboard was bad. Got my 4 gb working now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blind bat Posted February 4, 2011 Share Posted February 4, 2011 Wow, congrats! I hate those types of problems especially when you don't have a supply closet full of identical spares. I'm an IT guy if you can't tell. I once had a boss ask me why we don't just build computers because it would look a lot cheaper on the books (don't ask it actually makes sense if you know our screwy accounting system). I explained to him that buying from a big name doesn't guarantee any kind of service but at least there is a >90% chance that the machine will work when we pull it out of the box. Dicking around with annoying problems like a faulty motherboard would eat up way too much time for an already understaffed operation. Then again Dell machines might work out of the box but they sure have had their share of bad capacitors. The last system I built at home was a web server. I bought the brand name motherboard and processor as a bundle deal from New Egg. The bios that shipped with the motherboard wasn't new enough to support the processor and there wasn't a way to flash the bios without a supported processor installed. I ended up stealing the processor out of my MythTV box just to flash the darn thing. Luckily that processor was new enough to work with the new motherboard but old enough to be support by the bios. I successfully flashed the Bios then had to reassemble two computers... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Gundry Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 Even though you have it up and running, here's a handy tidbit: -It is legal to use an 'upgrade' license when going from xp to vista or 7, but because the OSes are so different, an upgrade is not possible. According to MS, your options at this point are to either do a double install (clean install, don't put in a product key and don't let it activate automatically until the install is done) or do the same blank install once (again, no product key or activation) then create a folder in the C: drive called 'Windows.old' and then activate the OS. The second option is by far cleaner, as the double install trick does the same thing but stuffs the first install into the windows.old fold the second install creates (which takes up twice the space of a clean install). The upgrade license just checks for the presence of the windows.old folder, not it's contents. The same trick works for doing a 32 to 64bit upgrade, or even a clean install on a fresh system (but that violates the EULA and is illegal). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now