Wrong memroy size reported

Are you running XP with SP2? I dont know about what your mobo manual says but mobo's that support dual channel and have 4 module slots are generally color coded. slots 1&2 are one color and slots 3&4 are another color. the slots that are the same color are the same channel.

Yeah I running XP SP2. Both sticks are in one channel, slots 1 and 2. I checked the boot.ini and no limit on mem. I also upgraded mobo bios. But now i'm really confused. POST reads Dual Channel Mode 1488MB OK, Bios reads 2048 Mb Dual Channel and Windows system says 1.45Gb Before when I checked bot.ini max limit was 1024 now max is 1488. Time to pull them out again and check each seperate. I'll post what I find out. Thanks for your help iss

the ASRock 939Dual-SATAII mobo uses the same color slots for dual channel. fish is right, to run it in dual channel you put both sticks in the same color slots. (1&2 are blue and 3&4 are purple).

however that doesn't explain why windows doesn't recognize all 4 sticks when the BIOS does.

fish4specs, have you flashed to a newer BIOS version? I always liked that mobo (i used to use it myself) but it has its quirks so ASRock makes a new BIOS every other week (or at least it seems that way ). a newer version may fix the memory issue

:wave:

Well, I flashed the bios. Board came with 1.5, latest was 2.2. I'm using 2 sticks of 1 gig apiece. Bios lists slot1 1024mb slot2 1024mb Total 2048Mb Dual Channel memory mode. But now at post memory check only reads 1488MB OK. And windows only finds 1.45 Gig. Tried each stick seperately after bios upgrade, each reads 1024mb at post and 1 gig in windows. Placed them in slots 3 & 4 still only reads 1488MB OK at POST memory test and 1.45G in windows. Tomorrow I will test both in another machine.
I'm not very experienced at flashing bios, little gun shy from when I really botched one, but can bios be fahed with an older version? Should I return to 1.5 and flash each successive upgrade till I find one that works properly?

Another update here,
First I removed a recently added PCIe card (Edius NX) hoping that might solve the problem but didn't although POST mem test began recognizing 2000MB OK and Windows system 1.95 Gig) Anyway I reflashed ram, changed setting one at a time (my bad for making multiple changes before) With AGP Aperature size set to 128Mb POST mem test reads 2014MB OK and Windows recognizes 2.00 Gig ram. When AGP Aperature is set to 256Mb POST mem test read 2000MB OK and windows recognizes 1.95Gig ram. Video card is an Nvidia Geforce FX5200 256MB AGP. So, is this a bad Mobo, bad video card or some conflict (no conflicts listed in device manager)? And how do I determine which? I don't have another of these boards, my card worked properly in the last system although I may have access to another system to test it in.
Going to reinstall Edius NX baord now to see what happens.......Edit....With Edius NX PCIe x1 installed POST mem test read 1488MB OK and Windows recognizes 1.45 Gig ram. So I probably need a new video card thats not AGP. There is also a PCIe x16 slot, Would a video card in this slot create a conflict with the x1 slot and NX board or should I use PCI?

since all your components work fine separately, then they are not defective.

1. it sounds like it's either a compatibility issue or..

2. your PCIe card has some of your system RAM dedicated to it (like a turbo cache video card)

the latter would be my first guess

cheers :wave:

Thanks iss and KingCody for ya'lls help. Techspot forums rule:grinthumb

your welcome

but did do you figure out what the problem was?

Well, I haven't solved the problem but I've narrowed it down significantly. I removed the AGP Video Card and left in PCIe NX card and the POST memory reads 2048MB OK and windows finds 2Gig ram. So it seems that there is a conflict or shared bus issues with AGP and PCIe with this board. I also tried the PCIe x1 card in the x16 slot but the same issues applied. This conflict doesn't make sense to me because a scematic I saw showed PCIe controlled by the northbridge and AGP by the southbridge. Atleast now I know where the problem is guess I'll be on the phone with ASRock tech support.

turn off memory sharing between the graphics card and main memory in BIOS. But with that much memory..... why bother. You have way more than enough for everything.

I'll try that but I don't see anything in BIOS about memory sharing. It's an ASRock AMI bios. Found "memory hole" and options were Auto, Enable and Disable. None of the choices seemed to have any effect. What else might it be called? I have plenty of memory but need alot for video editing and encoding, I just didn't know if whatever is causing memory issue might have some other effects on the system.

Been a while since I quit dealing with this issue but I recently got a newer AGP Card (eVGA 6200) to install. Removed AGP 5200 and PCI Voodoo4, now both monitors on much newer card. POST read 1968MB OK and Windows reports 1.92GB of Ram. While the previous 1.45 of Ram reported was certainly enough to running most anything, the computer seems to be responding noticably faster, that is programs loading faster, etc. Oh yeah, a couple days ago I was capturing some audio via mic port into Canopus edius it stopped with message "PCI bus busy" - might this be related to the aforementioned problem? I'll try to borrow a better PCI (256 6200) card and see if that makes any difference.
Just ran a quick Performance test and got 11.1 on Graphics 3D-Complex. Not a great score but older set up was .32 , Yep point 32.
Updated to 91.31 driver, Performance test 3D Complex up to 12.2. shrug
**Update**
Well new eVGA e-Geforce 6200 AGP card caused serious lag or stutter in Canopus Edius when scrubbing video. Just goes to show ya. Better scores in Performance test and lower performance in actual apps. Reinstalled original Asylum Geforce 5200 AGP Video scrubs smoother and now Performace test 3d comples score 7.1.