hardware reserved ram mystery

[mrstrong]

Hi,

 

I have some old HP laptops I'm trying to re-use. With only 32GB hard drive, 4GB Ram

they soon run out of space so I thought I'd try 32 bit windows 10 as it is a few GB smaller.

HP support only has drivers for 64 bit but the 32 bit install seemed to go ok and left me with

12GB free after a clean install fully updated and putting on office 2016.

 

Only weird thing is it says 1.91GB ram usable and 2.1 GB hardware reserved (checked on a 64 bit

install on same laptop model and hardware reserved is only around 100MB!)

 

Any ideas ? I guess for a bit of browsing / word processing 1.91 GB usable should be ok but its bugging

me re the missing 2GB, bit of a mystery!?

[mavhc]

32bit Windows can only access 4GB RAM, however some of those memory addresses are used for communicating with hardware, memory for the gpu, and other stuff

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap I think would only show the 1.91GBs though

 

Some options https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/the-usable-memory-may-be-less-than-the-installed-memory-on-windows-7-based-computers-3d194dc3-39b9-fae7-74d8-59931b53d2c2

[Koldov]

Unfortunately Google has millions of hits for Hardware Reserved problems, it's like asking about a printing problem....

 

But I would probably just bite the bullet and go 64bit...

 

If it is for word processing and web browsing as you say, I'd prefer 2GB more memory over a few GB less disk space.

 

Alternatively, look at the version of Windows 10 you're using and see if there is anything to strip out.

 

Back in the day, I had a lot of trouble trying to shoehorn Win 10 64bit onto old computers, some would just get on with it and install, some threw up all sorts of errors or just flat out refuse... It all depends on motherboards, memory and chipsets etc.

 

Just be careful and make sure EVERYTHING works though...

 

One thing I found with some ancient HP 620 laptops, was that after a fresh install the sound just didn't work, but I came across a work around that fixed it, by the Max Memory box in MSconfig.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-10/199474-hp-620-laptop-windows-10-no-sound.html

 

No idea why it worked or what it meant for the system, I was just glad it worked! Obviously the chipset on the motherboard wasn't designed with Win 10 in mind or how it uses memory, so something didn't work quite right.

 

The upshot however, was that the Hardware Reserved memory changed dramatically. It seemed with the sound not working the Reserved was ridiculously small and almost the whole 4GB was usable, yet with the sound working it took it down to 2.9GB...

Edited March 23, 2021 by Koldov

[mrstrong]

thanks, rammap does indeed only show the 2GB

 

Google-fu has failed me on this one, tried most suggestions and nothing in bios to tweak.

 

Did notice display adapter listed as Microsoft Basic Display Adapter so updated to Intel HD

but made no difference and flaky (screen flashes).

 

Also some missing/generic drivers installed so tried the "intel driver & support assistant" but its just

spinning on "scanning your system".

 

Given no 32 bit drivers on HP site think I will have to give up on this one for now

[Dos_Box]

Just to add to this. I did an in-place upgrade to Windows 11 the other week and it reserved 8GB of my 16GB RAM for hardware.

I've tried everything I can find on the net about this to no joy, but does seem to be a common problem though. Whether it's my hardware (Ryzen 2600, 16GB DDR4 3200, RX580, Gigabyte B450M board), or just Windows being a pain I don't know.

I'm going to flatten it and install from scratch tomorrow I think, and there may also be a BIOS roll-back involved too.

It's amazing that even now, Windows can create problems. OK, that may have been a little unfair as it may genuinely be hardware related, but Windows 10 was perfectly fine with my setup before.

[psydii]

In my experience, the cost in time in setting up and maintaining a 32Gb machine is almost certainly not worth it. It would be massively more cost effective to buy new modern 4gb/64GB devices.

 

However this does require the BM/Finance Director/Head share a business/productivity based perspective on costs.

 

If you do have to go down the route of keeping the 32Gb machines in service, they will either require re-wiping on potentially weekly/daily basis, and there will almost certainly be times when their limitations get in the way of student productivity (i.e. their use will waste lesson/study time)

 

For us, even stripped down carefully, a single windows update would make them unusable, and Edge/Chrome/Teams would also very quickly bring them to their knees.

[mavhc]

Even 128GB is too small now that Teams and Office want to store multiple copies of themselves to do updates.

 

If the storage is upgradable upgrade them, if not, don't buy unupgradable computers next time

[psydii]

Even 128GB is too small now that Teams and Office want to store multiple copies of themselves to do updates.

 

 

64Gb is enough to run as shared chromebook-alikes. Web based apps only, and allow for a reasonable maintenance regime to keep them running. Definitely agree Teams will quickly eat all the diskspace (tbh 256Gb isn't enough if you've got Teams installed on shared machines)

 

If they are going to be 1:1 you can get away with Teams and Office installed (just), but if the use-case allows, go web-app only.