windows not recognizing 4MB

[serimral]

The motherboard finds it ok and checks it ok.
PC Wizard sees it and Sandra Lite sees it.
Windows displays 3GB
Free Ram XP pro only shows 2047.

Any ideas? it is dual channel and brand new and the correct memory for my board.
For both PC Wizard and Sandra to show it I assume it must be working ok but I am no expert hence my post in here.

 

[iss]

I am assuming that contrary to the title of your thread you are talking about 4GB of ram not 4mb? if so are you sure that your board supports 4GB? alot of boards only support up to 3GB of ram.

 

[serimral]

Yes sorry I meant to type 4GB.
The motherboard is an Intel 945GCZ and yes it supports 4GB.
I was wondering because it is dual channel, if one memory stick was dead would it cause this particular problem?

 

[iss]

if one memory stick was dead it would be more likely that the system wouldnt even boot. are these matched pairs of dual channel memory?

 

[serimral]

Yes kingston KVR533D2N4K2/2G

I purchased two packs of (2GB) sold in pairs as 1 GB sticks.

 

[iss]

have you made any changes in the memory settings in the bios?

 

[serimral]

No, the bios settings recognized it straight away and I really do not have many options within my bios set up.
I have read elsewhere that XP will not display exactly 4GB if installed, it will actually show 3. something. My computer shows 3.24GB.

I read this " And 4GB becomes less through a variety of issues: A 32-bit processor can only address 4GB of memory. But since XP has a variety of shared & reserved addresses, and the BIOS reserves some blocks for various uses, and the video card reserves uses some address space (AGP aperture, etc.) in the main memory area -- all of these reduce the effective amount of a 4GB address space that is available. So depending on the motherboard & the video card you have, the actual addressible memory will be less. Typically it's around 3.5GB "
This seems to be my problem, windows not the motherboard or memory.
There seemed to be a lot of people with the same problem including some on the dell forum which I had a look at even though I do not have one.