[P5200]

My HP Pavilion Desk Top came with Vista ( 2) 320 gig. hard drives one I guess for storage. I didn't like the Vista at all so, I used the other drive and put XP Home on it. The Ram shows up as 3.25 gigs. now instead of 4 gigs as it did in Vista. I have read somewhere that XP doesn't recognize anything much over 3 gigs. of memory. so. I removed one gig. and it now shows an even 3 gigs. as it should. my question is am I better off to have the 4 gigs. even though it only shows 3.25 gigs. maybe useful even if it is not fully recognized? Thanks!

[Hybr!d]

Correct, 32bit OS cannot see all the RAM, if it can't see it, it can't use it.

[P5200]

Thanks very much for your quick, reply!

[thingie2]

Yea, the Vista must have been the 64 bit version, and XP the 32 bit version, It's probably best for you to keep all 4 GB in the machine, just because the machine can't see all the RAM doesn't mean it's not going to work

[serverguy]

Yep, it is fine to leave all the RAM in the machine.

[P5200]

Thanks for the advice fellas, I think I will put the other gig. back in.

[serverguy]

No problems.

[gadstylee]

32bit OS can read up to 4Gb of RAM. but of course it very dependent on your hardware. check your hardware compatibility. your limitation might be in the hardware side. and also you may already know the allocation thing of the OS, It will not really give you all the RAM available.
:)

[P5200]

Hi, here is what I have it will explain better than I could about it. Thanks! http://www.officedepot.com/a/product...ktop-Computer/