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Old January 6th 09, 10:13 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers
Ken Blake, MVP
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Posts: 10,402
Default A Disk Read Error Occurred

On Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:33:50 -0500, johnn wrote:


Belarc states:
"Memory Modules
"3318 Megabytes Installed Memory
"Slot 'J1MY' has 2048 MB (serial number 0x693A0429)
"Slot 'J2MY' is Empty
"Slot 'J3MY' has 2048 MB (serial number 0x693A4929)
"Slot 'J4MY' is Empty

System Properties states"
"3.24 GB of RAM

EVEREST Home Edirtion states:
"Physical Memory
" total 3317 MB

My computere invoice states:
"2GB 800 MHZ DDR2 DIMM (AKVR800D2N5-2G) Qty 2.

Why the system tells me I have only 3.18 (or so) GB, while my invoice says I bought 4 GB, I can not
explain.



All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) have a 4GB
address space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can
not go.

But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.

Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no
address space to map it too.


The reason I bought an extra 2 GB is because memory is cheap,
and I don't like the possibility of
using swap files. At least, that was my rerasoning.




With the first 2GB, users of XP will hardly ever use the swap file.
2GB is already considerably more memory than most XP users need
(although the amount you use varies depending on what apps you run).

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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