I have a HP 8510w notebook with 4Gb of Ram but the new release of windows 7 only give me 3Gb

Alfred - Just a quick question - did you install the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Win 7? If you right-click on Computer in the Start Menu and select Properties - it'll tell you right there. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you've got the 32 bit installed.A 32 bit OS can see only a maximum of 3.25 to 3.5 (on average) GB of RAM. You'll need to install the 64 bit Win 7 RC to get the most of your RAM.

I concur with Alfred. I have installed Windows 7 - 64 bits - on my 4 gb RAM desktop computer and the General System Information (or something like that) is displaying the following : Installed memory (RAM) : 4,00 Gb (2,94 Gb usable)

A great discussion on the memory limitation is located here: http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspxScroll down to the section labelled: 32-bit Client Effective Memory Limits- John

Sounds like your video card or other device is using shared memory if you are using 64 bit and shows 2.94gb usable.Tim Comes

My video card is a ATI Radeon X1900. It should not need using shared memory. I can't imagine which of my device would. Furthermore, I am using a 4gb flash USB for Ready-Boost purposes. Is there a way I can figure that out ? Thanks anyway for the idea.

There is usually a BIOS setting about "mapping PCI space above the memory limit" or something like that. You have to turn this on. I have 64 bit Vista and7 with 8GB RAM and all is available and useable.

Also check that BIOS or other setting in BIOS are not being cached to ram that can cause an issue also.Tim Comes

Very good indeed ! Thank you very much. I've had a hard time finding out where this PCI mapping was in the BIOS menu, but it was the right thing to do. I have 4 gb available now and my PC went up the evaluation ladder, from 5,5 to 5,9 :) Thank you again.

what else could it be called, I'll have a look again. I have the 2.94 problem from 4.00GB of RAM...