Hey there!
I’ve been doing a bit of digging on Google, and it seems I’m certainly not the first person to run into this particular headache 😬 but I’ve already exhausted just about every troubleshooting step I could find online, so if anyone feels like sticking with me through the details...
The Issue:Installed Memory: 4.00 GB (3.12 GB usable)
Here is what I’ve tried so far:1.
running msconfig -> boot -> advanced options -> checking the "maximum memory" box
2.Looking for memory remapping in the BIOS—though I couldn't find an option by that name or anything even remotely similar 🤷
Motherboard: My MSI 945 P Neo5 supposedly supports up to 4GB of RAM according to the specs;
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/945P_N...-specification
BIOS version: Currently on v9.4. I noticed there is an upgrade available to v9.5, but the changelog only mentions "update CPU micro code." To be honest, I'm a little nervous about flashing the BIOS, especially since the description doesn't explicitly mention adding a memory remapping feature, which makes me hesitate
http://www.msi.com/support/mb/945P_Neo5.html#down-biosProcessor: Intel Core2 duo CPU E4500 @ 2.2GHz—my research suggests this should handle 4GB of RAM just fine
Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce 8600 gt
THE ONLY POTENTIAL CULPRIT:I recently picked up an extra 2GB of RAM, but since I couldn't track down any modules running at the 400/533/667MHz speeds my motherboard officially supports, I ended up grabbing some 800MHz sticks from Amazon instead. The guy at the store assured me they would work perfectly fine together, but so far, no luck. I even tried swapping the positions of the sticks in the slots to see if that would trigger anything, but it didn't change a thing...