Hi Guys,
I recently upgraded to the following parts in my computer:

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU
E6550 @ 2.33Ghz

Intel Desktop Board
Media Series
DP35DP
4gb of 667DDR2 Transcend jet ram (2 sticks of 2gb)

The only issues I am having is that in win xp my system ram shows as 2.99GB instead of 4GB in xp+sp2 32bit, and it shows as about 3.1GB in vista ultiamte 32bit.
Is it that 32bit OSes can only use max 3gb ram?

When I press F2 and boot into bios then it clearly states that each channels has 2048mb of ram and that the ram is in "dual channel" mode.

The hardware guy whom I got the stuff from says he will find out and let me know how to get all teh 4GB to be used.

Another of my friend said that windows xp 32bit cannot detect 4gb of ram.

Anyway, I have the option of returning one stick of 2gb and getting my money back, or keep using 3gb, or to get all my 4gb which would be best.

Any advice from you guys about how to get the whole ram to be used would be very helpful to me.
Thanks a lot.

Sarosh

"Another of my friend said that windows xp 32bit cannot detect 4gb of ram"

Your friend is 100% correct.

Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM?

"And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

Should be around 3.5GB showing though. You may have intergated graphics (onboard). That would use up to 512MB.

On some systems, it goes to 3.5, on some others, it's 3.0. Few goes to 4 as well. Now, the only way to get your full 4GB, is 64-bit OS. Personally, your hardware contains 64-bit drivers, so you might as well make the change.

Most, if not all 32-bit programs runs on 64-bit.

"...if your video adapter has 512MB of RAM (like mine does), your maximum memory is going to at most be 3.5GB, because Vista has to use 512MB of that address space to address your video memory. It’ll actually be lower than the 3.5GB because there are other hardware resources that need address space, too. So, it never hurts to fill your computer with 4GB of RAM–you’ll definitely get the max, but you won’t be able to address it all. You probably won’t be able to address much more than 3GB, and you might not be able to address more than 2GB."

http://www.vistaclues.com/reader-qu...

"And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

Thanks for the replies guys.
My vedio card is 8500GT and it has 500MB of ram.
I'm also using my older ide 160gb seagate hd, and a sony dvd writer and cooler master 600W power supply.

Right now i'm on windows xp+sp2 and it shows 2.99GB, on vista it showed a bit more, i think about 3.1gb.

So I should stick with both the sticks of ram, becasue in my bios they both show as 2048mb and they show they are in dual-channel mode, which I think is about 10% faster.

I think what my hardware guy seemed to be telling me was that he was aware of one person in Goa (the place I live in) who has managed to do somethign to his motherboard or bios and get all the 4gb to show, but when we tried to contact him ont he phone he was not available.

I didnt quite understand about wheter al the 4gb will be used by the system, or only the 3gb that shows gets used.

Sarosh

lhuser, you said..
Personally, your hardware contains 64-bit drivers, so you might as well make the change.
Most, if not all 32-bit programs runs on 64-bit.

Do you mean that if I install xp 64bit it will come preloaded with all the drivers I need for my sound, lan, etc, etc?
Any idea if photoshop cs3 runs on 64bit?
Thanks again for the replies.

Sarosh

"Do you mean that if I install xp 64bit it will come preloaded with all the drivers I need for my sound, lan, etc, etc?"

Maybe, maybe not. Most likely you'll have to hunt down the 64-bit drivers & depending on your hardware, there *may* not be drivers available.

My advice is to just leave it as-is & don't worry about it. Read the links that I supplied. What you're experiencing is normal for a 32-bit OS with 4GB RAM.

"And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

I agree with jam. In most cases you don't need more than 2GB of RAM anyway when using XP.

I thought I'd get 4gb and that should be enough ram for 2-4 years atleast.

I made the same mistake with my old board, first I got 256mb, then 512mb. Then a year later I asked for another stick of 512mb, and I was told that I wont get an perfectly compatable ram, and I had to try out various brands till I found one that work.
With this 3GB it should be enough for atleast 2-3 years, and if I get 32bit xp Ill have 4gb, more than enough.

I had another question if I can post it here.
My computer has 2 audio ports on the front panel, one green for the speaker and one pink for the mic.

On the back panel it has a whole set of 7 ports for audio.

What I have done is plugged in my 2.1 creative speaker into the green socket in the front, and my headphones into the green socket at the back.

I can listen to music on both simultanously, and when i turn up the headphone volume there is no effect at all on the speaker volume.

I just wanted to know if this is harmful in anyway. When I would try this on my old board I would get a pop up message saying that I could be damaging some components.
Thanks

Sarosh

Hello again guys,
This is my first cpu/mb upgrade in about 4-5 years so I'd really appreciate if some of you can answer some of my questions.

I decided to keep the 4gb ram and finalized the bill with my vendor today.
I also exchanged some old parts and got a 250gb seagage sata drive.
The model is:
Part Number: ST3250310AS
SKU No: 122A987

I had read somewhere that the sata disks need drivers for xp to run them at full speed, but they also need a floppy drive to install the drivers. I dont have a flopyd rive.

Just last hour I have formated the 250GB disk into 4 partitions, and soon I will install xp on one of the partitions of that drive because it will be faster.

Just wanted to know from you guys if I am indeeded getting the best speed from the drive, or is there anything else I should do?
Thanks for all the info.

Sarosh

If you had a decent ATA100/ATA133 IDE HDD to begin with, you'll notice very little difference switching over to SATA. Although the theoretical data transfer rates for SATA2 are 300MB/sec (SATA1 is 150MB/sec), you're still dealing with the physical limitations of a rotating platter. I'm not saying moving to SATA was a bad move because it's not...just don't be surprised if you don't see a huge difference in performance.

BTW, get yourself a floppy drive. They're cheap & still come in handy occasionally. You may not use it often, but there may be a time when you'll need it & you'll be kicking yourself for not spending a few hundred rupees. You probably have an old one laying around somewhere?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial...

"And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

I think your Intel MBoard may support SATA drives natively. You will have several choices concerning how to setup the BIOS. I suggest you read the MBoard manual thoroughly to understand which settings to use.

http://www.intel.com/products/mothe...

"And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

Thanks again for the responses.
I am not able to install vista or xp on the new sata drive.
I did read as much as I could about the bios, but I did't understand everything.

With the mb there was an instruction page that said that if I dont want to use the intel matrix raid then I should configure he HD either as IDE or as AHCI instead of Raid.

If I set the new sata drive as ahcp and boot into xp which is installed on my older ata disk then I get the new hardware found pop up window and it says "PCI Device found" and it shows something as new device installed on pci13, but the new hard disk wont show eitehr in device properties nor in disk management console.

When I set the drive as IDI then also I get new hardware found pop up and it keeps saying "primary ide" and "secondary ide" but it says it cannot install drivers for this device and says the device was not intended for this platform.

The only option is to chose to configure the sata as RAID and this works perfectly. Using this setting I divided the 250gb hd into 4 partitions and gave each partition differnt and even formated each partition (not quick format).

However, when I try to install xp using a bootable cd then neitehr of the 4 new partitions from the 250gb appear in the option to choose from.
I removed the 160gb ata hd and tried with the bootable xp cd again, and this time it says that there are no hds attached on my system.

If I try to install vista using the vista bootable cd then it only displays the first partition of the 250gb disk, but it says it cannot install on this partition because "this drive contains dynamic volumes" or something like that.

I am able to use the 250gb as a general hd just fine, I even copied some songs to it and played them of it. The only problem is that neitehr the xp nor the vista bootable cd are able to install to this drive.

I tried all the above procedure with the jumper and without the jumper too.
With the jumper its restricted to 150gb/s and without the jumper its 300gb/s transfer rate.
Right now I have it without the jumper, and I can copy and paste stuff to and from it just fine, only cant install an os to it.

Sarosh

Whay can't you install an OS to that drive? Have you set the BIOS to boot to that drive? Now that it is possible to have as many as 10 harddrives installed you need to make more than the boot order selection to boot to the harddrive. If you look thru your BIOS selections you should find a selection to set the particular drive as the boot drive.

One item to note. Even though SATA doesn't share resources persa SATA controllers still control two drives. These should be listed as primary and secondary. When not using RAID the primary is normally the only bootable drive on that controller. So you need to make sure you have the drive connected to the primary channel. The SATA ports are normally numbered. Use the lowest number for your boot drive. Be sure to verify that SATA controller is enabled in the BIOS. Once that is done you should be able to boot to that drive and install your OS.

One last item. The RAID stuff can be confusing as hell. In many BIOSes you need to select some sort of RAID setting even when only using one drive on that controller. Some Intel chipsets allow up to 8 SATA drives. These chipsets will have two normal controllers for a total of four drives and 2 more controllers that may be used for RAID. The ports may be colored differently. I think the normal ports will be the lowest numbered.

OtheHill,
Your suggestions have brought me bit closer, but I am still not able to install an OS on the 250gb sata drive.
My first boot device is the cd rom, and second is hard disk.
My hard disk order is first the 160gb ata drive and second the 250gb sata drive.
If I set the 250gb as the first drive it just directly starts booting into the vista installation.

In my bios there is anothe option for my hard disk, either "native" or "legacy"
I chose legacy this time and chose to configure the sata as ide.
This time too I got the same mesage about ide channels and unable to install drivers for them.

However, this is the first time I am actually able to access the 250gb disk by selecting the ide mode.

I am able to do this because I fixed the 250gb cable into the sata0 slot on my motherboard.
Earlier he had used it to connect he eSata cable from the back of my cabinet. This cabinet also has an external eSata slot at the front, and the moptherboard also came with a eSata panel I can attach to the back of my cabinet.

So now I have attached the 250gb hd to the sata0 slot, and I am able to reach upto this stage, please see the SS below:

[url=http://www.imgx.org/public/view/7283][img]http://www.imgx.org/pthumbs/small/7283/device%20management.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://www.imgx.org/public/view/7284][img]http://www.imgx.org/pthumbs/small/7284/disk%20management.jpg[/img][/url]

I guess if I can somehow change that 250 disk from dynamic to basic, and change any 2 partitions to primary partition then I might be able to instal either os on them.
Right now the disk is dynamic and all the partitions are "simpe volume". I think I need one primary partition.

I had copied several songs to the Songs Movies(k) partition on the 250gb disk few hours ago and I can still play them fine, so the disk is in good shape, just not allowing to install an OS.

Sarosh

These are the links again:
http://www.imgx.org/pfiles/7283/dev...

http://www.imgx.org/pfiles/7284/dis...

Sarosh

You can't install an OS to a dynamic disk. Evidently you have created the partitions on this disk while in Vista. I suggest that you delete ALL the partitions on the 250GB drive and leave it as unpartitioned/formatted space. Then set that harddrive as the boot drive. Installing WinXP AFTER Vista can present its own set of issues. Generally speaking MSoft likes to do things the other way. Older to newer. From what I read you may not have any issues installing WinXP. WinXP will assign the letter D to the partition you create for the WinXP OS. I suggest you ONLY create ONE partition of the size you wnat WinXP to occupy. Leave all the remaining space unallocated until WinXP is up and running. You wil then be able to complete the partitioning, formatting and labeling then. WinXP allows you to assign and change partition labels at will.

I only have xp+sp2 on the 160gb ata disk right now.
I also tried what you suggested. I deleted all the partitions and it shows "unallocated space" of 232gb and I tried to install again. But that didnt work either.
Even in vista when I chose the drive and select options then all the buttons for extend, delete, etc are grayed out.

I did some searching and I read about the tool "diskpart" and it says using that I can convert dynamic disk to basic disk.
Hopefully that should work, I will try it agian.

Just to get your advice straigh...
I should delete all the partitions until I have only unallocated space, and then boot from the vista bootable cd, right?

Sarosh

Just a quick post..
I chatted with my american friend on IM just few mins ago, and he solved the problem for me in a min.
I had to delete all the partitions and make it unallocated.
Then right click on the drive lable and convert it to basick.
Ive done it and now I have 2 primary partitions and 2 extended partions and the 250gb disk is basic, not dynamic.

Lol, i wasted 3-4 hours on this simple thing.
Im going to try to install ont eh 250gb again, wish me luck.
Thanks.

Sarosh

You can't convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk. I thought you just stated you deleted the partitions anyway?

I thought you were trying to install WinXP and you already had Vista. The way you need to go is easier.

"I deleted all the partitions and it shows "unallocated space" of 232gb and I tried to install again. But that didn't work either".

Explain WHAT didn't work. Did you boot the the Vista disk?

I was actually tring to install xp and vista.
I just converted the dynamic disk to a basic disk, and I set up 2 partitions as primary, one for vista and one for xp.

I just loaded vista in one of them and it was the fastest smoothest installation ive had.

I didnt know what was a basic disk and what was a dynamic before today, now I do.

I just had to make sure that I set the disk as a basic disk before I made the partitions.

Thanks for all yoru help, would have been tougher with yoru help.

Hope I answered yoru questions, if you have any more pleae do ask.

Im on vista booted from the sata disk at 3gb/s mode now.

Sarosh

Glad you got it sorted out.

Thanks, I probably took hours more than it would take anyone else, but at last I got what I wanted.
BTW, I tried installing both vista and xp on the sata hd, and both install and operate perfectly, however, I am not gettinig the boot menu from where to choose which OS to load.
I think that menu apperas only when vista is on a different HD than xp.

I tried entering a new line in my boot.ini file. These are its current contents:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="VISTA" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I added the second line about vista, and when I select it the comp seems to load into vista for 3-4 seconds and then then just pauses.

I think that if I can get the boot.ini setting for vista correctly then I can easily have a daul boot option, which I wanted.

If you can tell me the entry for vista in the boot.ini file then that would help me a bunch.
You can even give me some alternatives to try out.
My vista is ultimate edition.

Sarosh

At this point I suggest that you try a new thread. There are folks here that would be better at advising you on the correct wording for your system. I'm wondering if FixBoot or FixMBR would straighten it out.

I will do that, thanks.
Learnt a lot of new stuff in one day, before yesterday I didnt know the difference between basis and dynamic disks.

Also thanks to jam, you provide me info that would usually take me days of asking around or hours of searching, thanks dude.

Sarosh