Installed windows 10 and have a quick question

Hi all. I have been lurking for years but finally decided to create an account. I performed a fresh install of windows 10 Home 64 on a cf-19 MK3 with an SSD, CF-19KDRL66B, and have everything working very fast and smoothly. I did not use the Toshiba BT stack and instead used a generic driver, it works much better and interfaces with the win 10 functions perfectly. I also upgraded the RAM to 8GB, using 2 X 4GB DDR2-800MHz PC2-6400 low density.

Now, here is where I am confused. My understanding is that the MK3 supports 8GB on a 64 system, but my BIOS (V3.01L22) info screen shows 8GB physically installed, but only 3.7GB available. However, Windows recognizes all 8GB of physical memory, with approximately 7.84 available. I am wanting to know if this is normal, and if not, why the BIOS is not displaying correct data for the available amount of memory. If anyone knows how to correct this, I would greatly appreciate your help. I know that there are some extremely knowledgeable people on this site, hopefully one of you has the answer. Thanks!

 

Interesting question..

 

Most likely the Bios is a 32 bit one. it is ok as that is just the initialization and once the system is going it switches to 64 bit. the only caveat may be the memory may create a hole and not see the 8GB as one continuous block. This is not something you would notice as the OS manages the memory addresses.

As I said it may do that or it could during the initialization of the 64bit just move the memory addresses.

 

That makes perfect sense and is most likely what is happening. I greatly appreciate your input, and thank you for taking the time out to respond to my question.

 

It shows "38xxMB for 32bit OS" in BIOS so if you use 32bit OS you'll get 3.7GB...

 

I did the same thing a few years ago with W7. It would not show the full 8GB of memory. At that time I check to see if they had a BIOS update for it but nothing was available. Also had this problem on another Toughbook but can't remember which one.

If you run a free program called "CPU-Z" it will list your mother board info. Then do a google search and look for the Intel link. This should tell your if your motherboard supports 8GB memory

 

and it does

 

The chipset definitely does support that much RAM. Both TANWare and toughasnails are correct though in explaining that even though the motherboard does support it, and the win 10 and cpu can see and use all 8GB, the BIOS was developed to only support a 32 bit system so it does not see the true available memory. I spoke with a technician at Heartland and he confirmed that BIOS for 64 bit was not utilized until the MK5, but that there is no harm in using the 8GB. Thanks for the help guys!

 

Something you could try is checking out some free programs that test you 19 running 4GB and 8GB memory. I do this with my 53 but just can't remember what it's called.