I recently bought a kit machine with an Intel Duo CPU (64 bit) and an MSI P965 Neo-F motherboard.\u00a0 I’d put it together with the intention of using it for Photoshop stuff and for running labs in VMware.\u00a0 I stocked it with 4GB RAM (the motherboard limit) and installed Windows XP x64 Professional.\u00a0 I went 64bit to limit memory problems and also so I could run 64 bit VM’s for Exchange 2007.<\/p>\n
I’d installed the OS, patched it up and then checked it over.\u00a0 Winver told me I only had 3.2GB of RAM.\u00a0 Funny, because BIOS told me I had a working 4GB.\u00a0 I went googling for ages but couldn’t find the correct answer.\u00a0 It was clear though, that lots of people were having this problem.\u00a0 Some stuff I found:<\/p>\n
I was beginning to lose hope and starting to believe that 3\/4 of\u00a0GB of RAM was wasted.\u00a0 I then found some forum posts sayiong that the motherboard was dedicating memory to PCI devices.\u00a0 What!\u00a0 I knew graphics cards with no native RAM might do this but I’d bought a good card with native RAM.\u00a0 The articles claimed other devices could take 3\/4 of\u00a0GB of RAM and nothing could be done about it.<\/p>\n
I then went to the source, MSI.\u00a0 I tried to search their support forum but their search engine is useless.\u00a0 I tried searching for "MSI P965 x64 RAM 4GB" but was told that was too generic a search.\u00a0 Rubbish!\u00a0 I had to manually browse through their forums and eventually found what I wanted.\u00a0 Someone had raised the same issue I had.\u00a0 Eventually someone had told them to installed v1.5 of the BIOS update (fairly new).\u00a0 It’s readme said it "resolved memory issues" but didn’t go into any detail.\u00a0 But the person posted back saying the problem was resolved by the update.\u00a0 Excellent.<\/p>\n
I downloaded the update.\u00a0 Now MSI were sending me back to the stoneage.\u00a0 The installer was a DOS program and required a floppy drive and DOS diskettes.\u00a0 Luckily, I’d bought a floppy drive (I thought I’d need it for SATA drivers – which I didn’t in the end) but I had no diskettes.\u00a0 A trip to PC World and luckily the had about 5 boxes tucked away in a dusty, dark corner.\u00a0 MSI might want to consider an online updater like the one HP use.\u00a0 Most PC’s don’t come with floppy drive anymore and Microsoft is moving away from DOS towards WinPE.<\/p>\n
The instructions were very unclear but I had to copy two files (an exe and a flash image) to one diskette and make a system drive\u00a0with another.\u00a0 I booted into DOS amd seitched diskettes.\u00a0 I ran the exe.\u00a0 It then asked me in garbled non-English to type in the name of the image file.\u00a0 It took me 30 seconds to grasp what it was trying to ask me … some English lessons for the programmers please!<\/p>\n
One flash update and a reboot later and I was sorted.\u00a0 Windows reported 4GB RAM was available.\u00a0 A by result was that the Realtek audio drivers needed to be reloaded.<\/p>\n
Now I’ve got a powerful PC ready to run lots of VM’s!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently bought a kit machine with an Intel Duo CPU (64 bit) and an MSI P965 Neo-F motherboard.\u00a0 I’d put it together with the intention of using it for Photoshop stuff and for running labs in VMware.\u00a0 I stocked it with 4GB RAM (the motherboard limit) and installed Windows XP x64 Professional.\u00a0 I went … Continue reading “Intel Duo, MSI Motherboard and WXP64 with 4GB RAM (?)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t