I ran into a peculiar problem recently. I had 1 x 2GB DDR2 RAM installed on my laptop. When I tried adding another ram stick (again 2GB), Windows 7 started crashing. I would get the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) during the “Windows is Loading” screen.
Obviously, the most probable culprit was the RAM stick. And that’s what I thought too. But, soon I realised that Windows 7 was the only one having trouble with 4GB ram. Linux Mint worked perfectly with 4GB as well as 2GB ram and Memtest didn’t throw up any errors.
I tried swapping the two RAM sticks. But the end result was same. Use any one of the memory sticks and Windows 7 would work, but use both of them and Windows would crash. Apparently I wasn’t the only person facing this problem. A quick Google search revealed that several other folks were having trouble with this weird phenomenon.
After digging around for a little while I finally found the solution. There is a simple fix to this problem. This is what you need to do:
Plug in all of your memory and boot into safe mode. In order to do this press F8 just before the Windows boot screen appears.
Type msconfig in the Start Menu.
Click on Boot and select Advanced Options.
Set the Number of processors to reflect the your configuration e.g. 2 for dual core processors.
Manually set the value of Maximum Memory. Here memory size is specified in MB. Hence, for 4GB RAM you should set it to 4096.
Save the changes and restart your system.
After doing this, all the entire memory should be visible in Windows. However, you still won’t be able to use more than 3GB RAM on the 32bit version. In order to use more than 3GB ram in Windows you will need to use the 64 bit version or patch windows to forcefully bypass this artificial restriction.
Wow, so glad you posted this – I was getting ready to put a new stick of memory in my Toshiba laptop…lol. It’s a shame they don’t tell you this kind of stuff when you them them. Thanks again!
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i have same problem. i just follow your your step in this article last night, and whole day normal
but SODIMM only usable 3GB (although detected 4GB). i use win 7 64bit and Compaq CQ40-416AU (AMD turion X2 processor).
any ideas?
email me : ajieboy[at]gmail.com
This is a problem 32 bit systems normally encounter. But since you are already using a 64bit OS, my guess is that your graphics adapter is sharing 1gb of RAM. Hence, it is not usable.
I actually tried changing the number of processors on my windows 7 32 bit install from 1 to 2 (have an E6850) to speed up my boot and had all sorts of problems. BSOD, had to safe boot, etc. Ended up restoring my system image from a second HD (thank goodness I did that!). Have you heard about this problem before?
I haven’t heard about BSOD’s due to changing that figure, but I remember reading that changing the no. of processors won’t make windows boot faster. Its a fake tweak that’s all over the intertubes.
Looks like I fell for it and it cost me some headaches!
Thanks for the response.
[...] could cause a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) if the system had 4GB (or more) RAM. I managed to find a fix for that issue. But, I had another minor niggle to figure out. Although I paid for 4GB of RAM, [...]
Greetings,
Does anyone know if there is a tweak to get Server 2008 R2 to do the same tjing?
Cheers,
Jimmy
This windows fix won’t work for me fully — it did stop the BSODs from showing up, BUT when I hit “apply” in msconfig, and then I go back into the BOOT Advanced window, it shows 3072!!! I have an NVidia 9400GT card that I assume does not share memory, but it is, is there a way to stop it from doing so?
I assume that this was case in Vista Ultimate (which, by the way, showed 4GB RAM despite being the 32-bit version), but it didn’t show “the truth”.
BTW, I am running a workhorse ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe with 4GB of Corsair Value Select and an AMD Opteron 185.
Oh, and on ASUS’s forums I found a fix that didn’t really work in the BIOS where you disable mapping (S/W and H/W) of 4GB and above of RAM. What affect would that have here? (It didn’t make a different in the reporting of the RAM that W7 saw.)
Any ideas on the issues above?
Thanks!
I love you man, i couldn’t figure this out at all. and neither could any tech support. all said the RAM didn’t meet the requirements of the machine. Awesome your the best.
Hi,
i too get the same bsod too many times. i have 2x2gb ddr2 ram on 32 bit xp os.
it runs perfectly on 2gb ram, but if i add another chip it gets crashed.
from your tip of changing the memory usage in boot.ini , i cant change it to 4096
dont know why i have attached both the chips [2x2gb] but still it just takes 2gb max in boot.ini. If i unselect the MAXMEM option then it recognises to 3.25gb but bsod’s occur 
can you please help me out?
mail me please : zaker78@gmail.com
thanks in adv
Regards