WTF??? 2GB + 2GB = 3GB? What's going on with my RAM?
 

Help! Up until today I've been running 2.5 GB of RAM (2GB + 512MB) in my laptop (Toshiba Satellite 100 -036), but lately I've been doing a lot of photoshopping while listening to music and surfing the web and it's been a little choppy, so I went out and bought another 2GB stick.

I put it in, restarted my computer, it recognized the new hardware, gave my computer a higher Windows rating and all, but when I check, it says I only have 3 GB of RAM. What gives?

As far as I knew 32-bit Vista (which is my OS) was capable of recognizing up to 3.5 GB of RAM...is my new RAM simply mis-labelled? (it's a Cruical one from BestBuy).

Thanks.

EDIT: well, according to some of the stuff I've read it's because I don't have SP1...is that true?

y not update to SP1 and see? plus u should always be the most update to date with any service pack releases.

if you really want to see if its miss labeled just take out your original ram and check with just your new stick in

I'm downloading it right now (didn't want to start it yesterday 'cuz I wanted to go to sleep lol)

urrrh: while that's an easy way to test it, I don't like monkeying around too much with the computer and if I don't have to take out/put RAM back in if I don't have to, I'd rather not. The screw for the door is already a little stripped haha.

I'll let you guys know if SP1 solves my problem...

SP1 will just TELL YOU that you have 4gigs of ram, but it won't be able to utilize it.

32bit OS's only recognizes up to a total of 4gig ram including your video. So if you have a 500mb video card ram, the rest of your system ram is basically un-utilized... I had this same problem too :)

if you want to make use of your ram (or more) grab a 64 bit OS and you should be able to see and utilize all the ram

Thanks for the replies...I tried downloading SP1, but the bastard won't install...I hate Windows.

Even so, it's noticeably faster with the new RAM than it was before...I'm very happy :)