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We have a server that has 24gigs installed and Windows Server 2008 Standard 64-bit installed on it. The 24gigs are detected under control panel/system, but it only uses 8gigs. We can see this both in the task manager and in winver.exe, and by the fact that the server has run out of memory. :)

We're totally stumped as why this is, so we're greatful for any pointers.

3 Answers 3

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Turns out that the motherboard requires that 2 CPUs are installed on it in order to use all memory slots on the motherboard, and we have only one. By rearranging the modules we now get 16gb at least. The manufacturer dropped the ball here when they sold us the additional memory and assured us that it would work with our server configuration, which it didn't.

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  • Ah, presumably a Nehalem Xeon based system? you do have to be a little careful when spec'ing out memory for them.
    – Chopper3
    Oct 5, 2009 at 9:17
  • Actually it's an Opteron Barcelona.
    – Sploofy
    Oct 7, 2009 at 10:30
  • Can you specify the motherboard manufacturer/model?
    – osij2is
    Oct 28, 2009 at 15:26
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May be you have "Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation" edition ?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_server_2008_r2

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  • No it is Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition according to Control Panel / System.
    – Sploofy
    Sep 30, 2009 at 15:24
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Is that much RAM supported by your hardware? Can BIOS or Linux Live CD see all the memory? You could check for boot flags, as they can be used to limit memory.

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  • Both BIOS and Windows Server see the memory, under control panel / system it says that the server has 24gb of memory. We can't reboot the server at this time since it's in use so we haven't been able to use a Linux Live CD yet.
    – Sploofy
    Oct 1, 2009 at 7:19
  • You should really check Linux Live CD then, because this helps determine, if the problem is in hardware or Windows. If it's hardware, maby your motherboard/BIOS rev doesn't support that much RAM (even if it detects it, it can't use it). If it's Windows, you might want to check msconfig.exe -> Boot. You can get overview of boot flags and maby memory limiting.
    – Don Zoomik
    Oct 2, 2009 at 7:56

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