Wierd RAM issue with vista 64

[Mr_M_Cox]

I keep getting blue screens at the moment for a variety of reported reasons. Having done a bit of detective work I found that vista was reporting my RAM in task manager as 4093 available, 3158 cached and 53 free. (4Gb installed by the way)

 

Is this right or is it a potential problem. If it is a prob anyone got any ideas what the solution might be? (no prizes for first person to say go to XP )

 

Cheers for the help all

Edited October 4, 2008 by Mr_M_Cox

[IanT]

Whats the BSOD error you are getting?

 

Have you got SP1 installed for x64?

[Michael]

I believe Windows Vista 32 SP1 reports 4GB of installed memory correctly and by the sounds of things, you're using all your memory up!

 

The blue screens could be caused either by faulty memory or possibly an application with a memory leak, which is consuming all your memory.

[mattx]

Best way to test your memory is to boot to the ultimate boot CD and use the memory checking tools on there:

 

Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

 

4 Gig of Ram won't be seen unless you are using the 64 bit ver of Vista.

[FN-GM]

Best way to test your memory is to boot to the ultimate boot CD and use the memory checking tools on there:

 

Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

 

 

Another option would be to use the memory testing app in Vista

 

4 Gig of Ram won't be seen unless you are using the 64 bit ver of Vista.

 

With Vista x32 SP1 it will show 4GB ram but doesn't use it all, seems a little pointless.

[Mr_M_Cox]

I have got vista X64, sorry should have said that.

 

I uninstalled a load of unused software and didnt get a blue screen yesterday

 

both memtest86+ and the vista boot up mem test reported no errors so maybe a dodgy bit of software was my issue, lets hope anyway.

 

I guess the only thing to do now is wait and see unless anyone knows of any good testing/diagnostic tools I could run just to confirm that everything is happy.

[Geoff]

I believe Windows Vista 32 SP1 reports 4GB of installed memory correctly and by the sounds of things, you're using all your memory up!

 

The blue screens could be caused either by faulty memory or possibly an application with a memory leak, which is consuming all your memory.

 

Vista uses all your memory. As the OP said, most of it's gone in file caching. Which is to be expected.

 

Bits of ram can disappear due to your bios shadowing system roms and/or your expansion cards (especially graphics) mapping their onboard ram to system memory.

[Mr_M_Cox]

Geoff, are you saying that vista is meant to cache all but 50mb of my RAM?

 

It may well be right and I just havent noticed bewfore but it might be a prob and I would love to know which

[SYNACK]

Geoff, are you saying that vista is meant to cache all but 50mb of my RAM?

 

It may well be right and I just havent noticed bewfore but it might be a prob and I would love to know which

 

Vista will attempt to cache as much as it can into your RAM for the fastest possible operation. It will immediatly release the RAM to an application that needs it though so this behaviour is expected and unlikely to be the cause of your problem.

 

How many cycles of memtest did you run as sometimes the RAM can fault only occasionally and will not be picked up by a single or even several passes. As Vista unlike XP makes use of all of the RAM these little errors are much more likely to be in areas of RAM that are in use.

 

Try running memtest overnight and see if that picks up anything that could be faulting intermittently.