problem with T500 DDR3 memory upgrade

i recently bought a new Lenovo T500 laptop. the new thinkpad series came with 2gb of ddr3 pc3-8500 memory. as an operating system i decided to get vista business 32-bit edition. the thinkpad came with alot of preloaded software that i removed, however, i did decide to keep several lenovo programs that take a bit of memory. and as you all know vista is a memory hog.

when i had just the 2gb memory module installed, the task manager would show that i was using around 1gb of memory and the bar showed that the physical memory usage was at about 45%. so i decided to upgrade to 4gb and i purchased the "G.SKILL 2GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066" from newegg.

i just recieved the new module today and i decided to install it and try it out. the thing is that when i go to control panel, and from there to system, it shows that i have 4gb of memory. bios also reads that i have 4gb installed. however, the task manager still shows that my physical memory usage is at around 1gb. also, the percentage is still at 42% and the line graph is still running at half. lavalys also shows that im only at 2519mb total physical memory.

to my understanding shouldnt the line graph and the percentage have been reduced to a a quarter since i doubled the memory? i understand the situation where 32-bit vista cant register the whole 4gb but shouldnt my system be able to register atleast 3.25gb???

 

It is because of Vista 32. You cannot say your system will address at least 3.25GB. Your system can address anywhere from 2.5GB to 3.75GB (these values have been reported by various users).

In MSConfig, check the max memory configured. And also update the BIOS to the latest version.

Best is to upgrade to Vista 64.

 

ok I will look into updating the bios. However, bios already reads the 4gb. Are there any other settings that I can change to get my computer to register more than the 2.5gb it's registering right now?

 

Not really anything you can do to get more memory usable under a 32bit OS.

 

Wow so I bought an extra 2gb to make it 4gb(well I understood that it would be close to 3.25gb) and vista is only letting me use 2.5gb!!!

so far I liked vista but now I can see what a lot of ppl mean... This is pretty ridiculous.

 

Its not Vista's fault, it is the 32-bit limitation and your notebook's hardware responsible for eating up all that memory at Windows startup.

You can either force-enable PAE (Google), or upgrade to Vista 64 (best solution).

 

If you turn off the Switchable Graphic in bios, and choose either integrated or discrete graphics you will get an additional 500 mb of ram in Vista 32 bit, so in total you will have around 3 Gb.

 

lenovo dropped the price on ram to 47$ with coupon. if you can return the ram, try getting the same dimm as the other one.

 

martin i dont think switching the module will help in this situation. gskill makes good ram. its most likely how my laptop is configured.

i also tried switching to just the integrated graphics and nothing changes. im going to try to update bios and also play around with the PAE settings but eventually i think the best option is to go to vista 64.

 

You'll also have to turn of the switchable graphic possibility in Bios, it does not work if you only choose the use the Integrated or discrete graphic card.

 

i tried to switch the bios settings to disable switchable graphics but that didnt seem to help. the task manager still shows only 2.5gb of ram.

im really not liking this...

 

Unless I'm doing something wrong and not appropriately disabling the switchable graphics.

Can some one generally post how to do that. thanks