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gmfry
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 Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 9:25 pm |
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Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2012 6:56 pm
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I have Windows 7 and Windows 10 installed on two SSD partitions and my Windows 8.1 is on a new 2TB hard drive. The 8.1 system has been unacceptably sluggish of late and looking at System properties may indicate the problem. It shows "Installed memory (RAM) 12.0 GB (2.99 GB usable)." It appears something is holding a bunch of RAM captive and I don't know what it might be. In Windows 7 and 10 on this same computer that reading is just 12 GB, no mention of 2.99 GB usable.
How do I go about locating the culprit?
Gerry
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Gerry
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MacDuffie
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Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:06 pm |
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Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:42 am
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Did you by mistake install a 32-bit copy of Windows 8.1?
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Patty MacDuffie
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gmfry
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2015 7:13 am |
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No, not by mistake. That was the only version Microsoft would let me download when I took advantage of their $39.95 special (with Media Center) in January of 2013. I just purchased an 8.1 recovery disc from them and they included a disc for both 32 and 64 bit.
Gerry
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dvair
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2015 8:38 am |
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Location: Johnstown, NY
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MacDuffie
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2015 10:14 am |
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Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:42 am
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That's the problem, Gerry. A 32-bit OS can only address 3 GBs of RAM.
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Patty MacDuffie
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gmfry
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2015 11:01 pm |
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Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2012 6:56 pm
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So Patty, is it possible for me to convert that partition to 64-bit by using my newly-purchased recovery disc without losing all my installed apps? My data is on another partition.
Dave, thanks for the link. I wish I had known about that before purchasing the recovery discs from Microsoft. The only recovery medium I was aware of was making it on a flash drive, and my computer will not boot from that.
Gerry
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MacDuffie
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Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 10:51 am |
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The "bitness" is determined by the operating system installed and the chipset on the motherboard. It would require a format of the partition to install the 64-bit OS. It would have to be a clean install. Your other partitions are 64-bit, right? Then there should be no issue with data stored on another partition. You will need to reinstall programs/apps as you would in any clean install.
That's very odd about not being able to download the 64-bit Windows 8 as that is exactly what I did.
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Patty MacDuffie
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gmfry
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Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 3:13 pm |
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Maybe I just didn't pay attention and was offered both versions but didn't see it. Anyway, I guess it's not that important at this point as I transition to using mostly the 64-bit Windows 10 OS. If I decide later that I still need to have 8.1 kicking around, I may just do a clean install and re-install only those programs that I absolutely need.
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Gerry
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jaylach
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Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 6:50 pm |
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Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:09 am
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Location: The state of confusion; I just use Wyoming for mail.
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I can't say about the download of 8.1 as I bought physical media. Both retail packages included one each of a 32 bit install and a 64 bit install. So I have two 32 bit install disks that I have no use for and can't even give away. I can't give away as I would think that both install disks (32 bit and 64 bit) are covered by the same one machine license.
Gerry, one thing that I noticed here is that you say that your 32 bit install only shows 2.9GB. 32 bit should be able to see 4GB. Is your video on-board or is it a dedicated card? If on-board that would explain the missing 1.1GB as it is probably being used by the video chip.
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MacDuffie
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Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2015 10:29 am |
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Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:42 am
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It should, Jay, but it doesn't. It can only address 3.
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Patty MacDuffie
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Doddie
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Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2015 3:34 pm |
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Location: Dunedin, Alba.
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I've only ever bought 1 pc in my life, my first one, an Escom P75 back in 1995 that's evolved over time to what i have today... there isn't any of the original Escom left in use now [sadly because the original ISA slot soundcard with DOS setup options in Win95 was truly awesome!] and it's certainly not the fastest on the planet but then i don't need it to be, it does everything i want from it and apart from the occasional hardware failure it is, and has been, reasonably stable over the years (if you don't include Windows 3.xx and 95  ). To my point... I currently have Win 7 Pro 32bit installed and when i upgraded the memory from 2GB to 4GB i was also surprised when Win 7 'saw' 4GB but only 3GB was usable... did a little digging online to find out why and came across this 2010 post by MVP Ken Blake that seemed to make perfect sense even if i didn't fully understand what address space is, i'd imagine it also applies to 32bit Win 8.x, and probably 32bit Win 10 as well?: Quote: All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP/7) have a 4GB
address space (64-bit versions can use much more). That's the
theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.
But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.
Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. If you have a greater amount of RAM, the rest of the RAM
goes unused because there is no address space to map it to.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003 Source: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 82c?auth=1Hope that helps.
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Doddie
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Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2015 3:47 pm |
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I forgot to mention that my motherboard does have an onboard 512mb video card but it's disabled in the BIOS, even if it were enabled that would only account for half my unusable "missing" memory so clearly other hardware is mapping to the 4GB address limit, i have no idea what and probably wouldn't be able to do anything about it anyway even if i did. 
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JoanA
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Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2015 9:22 am |
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Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2012 3:25 pm
Posts: 1916
Location: Pembrokeshire, South Wales, UK
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I have a 64 bit Asus with 8GB RAM installed, the computer says I have 7.89GB usable. The machine came with 4GB I added the other 4GB.
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MacDuffie
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Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2015 9:46 am |
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Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:42 am
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Address space is literally the amount of numbers you can assign to a memory "spot." 32 bits, means you only have 32 digits, in its various combinations of 0s and 1s, and then you run out of numbers. Kind of a like a state running out of 6 digit license place numbers and having to go to 7. Or phone numbers having to go to 10 digits instead of 7. You just don't have enough numbers to go around. 64-bit doubles the number of digit places, but the numbers of combinations grows logarithmically - meaning a LOT more! LOL
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Patty MacDuffie
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