RAM in Vaio VGN AW21M

[gerhagen7]

Have a Vaio since 2 years and switched recently to Windows7. 4GB RAM was installed already when I bought the Vaio. However, the system info says only 2,95 GB can be used. Don't know if this message was displayed already under VISTA.  Does anyone know if this is an performance critical issue and how to get it solved ( so that all 4 GB can be used ) ?  Thanks, Gerd

[MurdoD]

Very very common problem with 4Gb RAM installed.

From what I can gather (extensive research @ MSDN / Forums) there seems to be 1gb Ram reserved by your system for hardware, which the OS cannot use/access (hence 3gb available)

i.e reserved for your graphics card, if you extend the memory usage in the bios above the 256mb built in.

Basically, although windows recognises the 4gb, your motherboard reserves 1gb for other hardware usage. Sometimes you can control the memory usage/reserve in the BIOS setup, but obviously that is dependant on your systm, and I'm not familiar with the one on the AW21M.

Hope this helps! (Please mark as "Helpful Reply" if it does )