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I recently installed win 7 32bit as dual boot (to Win 10 64bit) on my Alienware 17 R3. I forgot what a pain manual driver installation used to be and probably got something wrong.

32bit is usually limited to 3.25 GB ram, right? But for me it's showing up as 16 GB (855mb usable) - I have no clue why. It's showing correctly in the BIOS (and the Win 10 system).

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I might still be missing quite a few drivers, but I don't remember needing drivers for RAM in the past...

Any ideas on how I might solve this?

Julix
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1 Answers1

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You do not need drivers for RAM to work. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to start up the computer. It's possible your RAM is corrupted/broken, which would explain why it's only showing 855MB as usable.

It could also be because of your BIOS settings. So I would look up the process for accessing those for your computer and try and change the RAM settings.

Also, if you can open your device, check to see if the RAM is accessible. If so, make sure it's seated properly.

Check msconfig (Win+R and enter msconfig) -> Boot - > advanced -> Max memory.

All 32-Bit installations of Windows are restricted to < 4GB of RAM, but even so, you should be able to use the other three.

Microsoft's docs suggest checking if memory remapping is enabled:

Enable the memory remapping feature

Check the BIOS settings to see whether the memory remapping feature is enabled. Memory remapping gives Windows access to more memory. You can enable the memory remapping feature in the BIOS by booting to the system setup. See the User's Guide for your computer for instructions on how to boot to system setup on your computer. The name for the memory remapping feature may be different for different hardware vendors. This can be listed as memory remapping, memory extension, or something similar. Be aware that your computer may not support the memory remapping feature.

(Be wary of software you download from the internet.)

Josi Whitlock
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