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I have a Dell Power Edge 1850, running Windows 2k3 x86. It has 4 GB of RAM (8 total sticks of 512MB, which I have tried re-seating, and completely replaced with new memory) however this is what I am seeing whenever I look at the Task Manager.

Memory Usage

What is going on here? It appears that it is running with close to 1 GB of RAM but only has 261 MB of physical memory? Does the indicator on the left include the physical memory + the available PF? Is there anything I can do to get windows to recognize the rest of the memory if possible?

Thank you in advance.

Edit: Should have said 6 total sticks of 512Mb. With a total of 3072Mb.

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What's about ram from bios? – lg. May 16 '11 at 15:27
Which PE1850 is this? The Dell documentation for the PE1850 indicate only 6 slots. – jscott May 16 '11 at 15:38
@jscott, my mistake you are correct. 6 slots. So I have 6x 512Mb should be equal to 3072Mb. I ran the tool that @Phil had indicated below, and it does show all 6 sticks at 512Mb. – aceinthehole May 16 '11 at 17:54
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4 Answers

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In some Dell systems, there is a BIOS option for "OS Install Mode". This limits the server to 256MB of physical RAM if it is enabled.

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+1 for that being a very logical reason. Half a stick is an odd size otherwise - sticks normally fail TOTALLY. Worth a check. – TomTom May 16 '11 at 18:04
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When you boot, you should be shown how much memory the server can "see" installed.

Also, you can use a tool such as http://www.cpuid.com/ to check if the OS can see the sticks of memory installed.

If either of these don't show 8 x 512Mb then I suspect some of the memory is duff.

If all 8 sticks show up then its likely that the OS itself isn't allowing you access to it all. I know that on Windows XP we would only see about 3.4GB with 4 x 1GB installed, not sure about Windows server though

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I was incorrect about the number of slots I had 6x 512 Mb. I ran the tool you suggested and it is showing all of the sticks that I suspect. – aceinthehole May 16 '11 at 17:55
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Defective hardware (Motherboard?) or incompatible bios (does not olike the memory). Point. 261mb memory is less than one stick. SHould not be like that.

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Try to boot your PE1850 with DELL diagnostic CD.

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