I Installed new ram on Vista home 32bit. It says I now have 6GB, I thought...

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pogo730

New member
...the limit on Vista 32bit was 4GB? So I've been reading online that the 32 bit version of Windows Vista (I'm using home edition with service pack 1 installed) can only support a maximum of 4GB of memory.

Recently I decided to upgrade my HP desktop so I ordered two 2GB chips so that I could go up to 4GB (which is the limit I read Vista has.) When I opened my PC up, I found that I had two 1GB chips already installed along with 2 empty RAM slots. Since I had the extra slots... I thought why not try installing the two new 2GB chips and left the previous 2 chips installed. The computer booted up fine and upon going to the control panel and looking under "System" it says I now have 6GB of RAM. So what's the deal? Is it not using all of it and just saying that it's there, was the information I read about the 4GB limit wrong, or did service pack 1 allow for more?

Any insight into this would be helpful (only from people who arn't just guessing please.) Thanks in advance!

PC: HP Pavilion d4790y with
2.4ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
 
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tuaamin13

Member
Under normal circumstances I'd say that you were looking in the BIOS, and the BIOS detected the full 6GB of RAM. However, you're in the OS itself. I suspect Microsoft put out an update that allows the system to detect the full amount of RAM installed, but 32bit Vista and XP can't use more than 3.3GB installed.

I recommend you upgrade to Vista x64 to get the full use out of your 6GB of RAM. If you installed Vista from a retail box version, it should have a copy of x32 and x64 included. OEM copies are one or the other.
 
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