Lenovo T61 memory recognition issue

Guys, I have my lenovo T61 in sig, which I am selling to pay off part of the paint costs on my laptop.
I bought the 4gb of OCZ memory from Newegg last week, and both 2gb pc2 5400 cards work fine. I install them into my laptop, and the bios reads all 4gb of memory.
When I boot into Windows Vista Ultimate x32, the system only reads 2Gb of memory. Even CPU-z only reads 2gb of memory.

Both memory cards work independently and are recognized as 2GB, and both cards pass memtest.

Is there something I am missing, cause I dont know why the memory is not reading 3.x gb or something like that, cause it should.

The chipset is a GM965, and the Bios reads all 4Gb, the OS only reads 2.0 exactly.
And Cpu-z picks up in the SPD tab that both cards are there

The graphics card is a nVidia Quadro NVS140 at 128mb.

Should I upgrade my Bios?
It already reads 4Gb of memory, so would it do anything. There is a new bios release for the system.

Thanks in advance,

K-TRON

 

From April till June, this current/latest June 4th version is actually the 2nd BIOS update Lenovo released, there was another release back in April 15th, which addresses to the memory issue:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-69703.html

I'm using the April 15th one, it's a good update, there isn't a June 4th one for my model, but there is one for your T61.

 

thanks Stewie, I will give upgrading the Bios a shot. I was thinking about doing it, but I was wondering why I would have to cause the Bios already recognizes 4gb of memory.

I will let you all know what happens.
Have to get the floppy drive out

K-TRON

 

Let me know how it goes, hope it will fix the issue.

 

Okay, I had bios revision 1.14. I upgrade to 2.18, which is the latest revision, and I still have the same problem.
The Bios still reads 4gb of memory but the operating system only reads 2gb.
I have done a lot of tests, so here is what I know:
If I install one 2gb module, the system bios reads 2gb and the OS reads 2GB.
Now If I install that module in the other slot, the same happens.
I have tested the same with teh other card. All 4 possibilities show 2gb in bios and 2gb in the Os from a single 2gb card.
However, when I put in two 2Gb cards, teh Bios reads 4gb and the OS reads only 2Gb.
This makes no sense, since each 2gb card is picked up as 2gb when run individually, so its not a chipset limitation.
I know for a fact that the T61 has an option for being sold with 4gb.

This is what I think:
The laptop is the RPI laptop, so I am assuming that they installed their own modified version of Vista which cannot recognize anything different than what came with the system. I think this because RPI probably does not want anyone to upgrade their laptops. However I found out the hardway, so I am going to get a separate sata harddrive and install my own, non-rpi copy of vista. That should allow my system to read 3.5of the 4gb of ram. If this is the case, than the problem is the damn rpi guys modified vista so it only recognizes one configuration.
Does anyone know how to change this setting in the operating system.

All of the memory cards have been tested with cpu-z and the vista operating system properties menu. Both cards pass memtest.

What do you guys think?

K-TRON

 

Hey K-TRON,

Sorry the BIOS update didn't solve the issue. :/

I did some search and I came up with this, have you check this setting?

 

There is another thing you can try, go into your BIOS and see if there is a setting for "Memory Remap", turn it off. Apparently, if memory remap is enabled, it will make Vista 32-bit to see only 2 GB. Some people have the same problem and they solved by turning off memory remap in BIOS.

 

I will go try your two recommendations. If they do not work, I think I am just going to install my own OS on a separate harddrive and see if the problem is related to the rpi operating system.

Thanks for the tips I will let you know what happens.

K-TRON

 

Stewie, their was nothing in the Bios which would allow me to change the memory restrictions.
However when I went into the advanced tab in MSCONFIG, the box was checked off, so I unchecked it and hopefully all of the ram will be recognized.
The system is restarting now,

K-TRON

 

Stewie you are the man. Cpu-z and the system now pick up 3070mb of memory.
You are awesome my friend.
My WEI for memory went up from 4.8 to 5.0
I know the WEI is stupid but it is running faster with 3gb of memory.

K-TRON

 

Awesome! +0.2 in WEI is not that important, but that extra GB of RAM is.

 

On this one Stewie is the man! K-T OS modifications was the desperation speaking. MS does not play nice with their code. They don't allow modifications. Back around 1999 MS had issues with DeLL having an opening screen "DeLL MS Windows 98". I could be wrong but don't think MS would let RPI play with their code.

Good to hear it is working before going out the window.