The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Acer Aspire 5680 only uses 3GB ram out of 4GB installed?

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by XL2007, Mar 30, 2009.

  1. XL2007

    XL2007 Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    74
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    I just installed Windows 7 x64 from scratch. Thing is, it shows 4GB of installed memory, but only 3GB is accessible.

    Resource Monitor shows 1026MB of memory being "hardware reserved".

    I've had this problem ever since adding the 4GBx2 sticks (DDR2-667) in my machine. I've tried 3.50 and 3.60 bios on Acer's site, but it doesn't make a difference.

    Processor is a T5500, but the chipset is i945PM, so it supports 4GB of ram. Is there a way to remap the ram so that the whole 4GB can be used?
     
    XL2007, Mar 30, 2009
    #1
  2. meegulthwarp

    meegulthwarp Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    30
    Messages:
    290
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    You may have that memory allocated to the GPU, try taking a look in the BIOS and you can change how much is allocated there.
     
    meegulthwarp, Mar 30, 2009
    #2
  3. XL2007

    XL2007 Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    74
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    The BIOS has no option for allocating memory. From what I heard, there was some difficulties in video card or other peripheral operating without that much memory allocated, so that entire block was "walled off". Forgot where that bit of info was from, but it pretty much explains my situation.

    Now if there's a bios number I could flash to that has that option, I'd love to find out about it. Right now, I'm on bios version 3.60, the newest one (although 3.50 is supposed to be the newest one -- got this one from the euro Acer site).
     
    XL2007, Apr 1, 2009
    #3
  4. RbtNYC123

    RbtNYC123 Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    50
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    XL, I have the same problem with my Acer 3050. I managed to free up some of the walled off memory by going to msconfig / Boot Options / Advanced Options and unchecking maximum memory. (Mine was capped at about 2.5 GB and I wasn't allowed to increase it, so I unchecked it.) However this only freed up about 500MB.

    Acer support was hilariously unhelpful. G-Skill (maker of my RAM) said that this is a common problem in Vista/Acer machines, and suggested the fix as re-installing Vista. I havent gone through this exercise, so I don't know if it will work.
     
    RbtNYC123, Apr 1, 2009
    #4
  5. XL2007

    XL2007 Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    74
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    That option was already unchecked. I believe it's a video card/bios thing. I figured Acer support wouldn't help me with this so I didn't bother calling them.
     
    XL2007, Apr 1, 2009
    #5
  6. strangedogs

    strangedogs Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    9
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    is anyone "for sure" that the beta's of Win 7 64 are really running as a true 64-bit OS.
     
    strangedogs, Apr 1, 2009
    #6
  7. Mudblood

    Mudblood Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I'm having this exact problem.

    Running Win7 x64 with bios 3.60 installed. Has anyone found a solution?
     
    Mudblood, Sep 27, 2009
    #7