Windows 7 install only recognizes 256mb ram

jhwk6957

jhwk6957

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 14, 2011
Messages
146
I am not sure if this is the right place for this question or not. but here goes.

I am trying to install windows 7 on my families old dell xps for my little brother.
specs:
Pentium 4 3ghz HT
2gb ddr ram
new 500Gb 7200 HDD Sata
ati radeon 9800 pro 256mb AGP video card.

The cmos battery was dead and so was the hard drive so I replaced both of those. I am now trying to install windows 7 on the machine, It takes literally 30 minutes to reach the install screen and when I finally click install it says "windows detects that the machine has 256mb memory, windows 7 requires 512MB, Windows install cannot continue"

Is windows detecting only the video card memory? in the bios it recognizes all 2GB of system memory. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
 
first off have you bother swapping your sticks and testing them individually? also which version of windows 7 are you trying to install? and yeah what the guy said, memtest.
 
Last edited:
What exactly do you have for memory sticks? 2x1GB? 4x512MB? Something else?
 
i ran a memtest and no errors were found. 4 sticks of 512mb are installed. Also I am trying to install a copy of windows 7 professional from a usb flash drive.
 
Since your motherboard has AGP bus on it for graphics, there probably is an option called "AGP aperture size" in BIOS. Try to set it as low as possible or disable it, if there's an option, and see if it helps out.
 
Some Dells have a bios setting to allow installation of old OSs, which means they reduce the max RAM available to 256mb. It may be turned on, check the bios settings.
 
cdr_74_premium said:
Some Dells have a bios setting to allow installation of old OSs, which means they reduce the max RAM available to 256mb. It may be turned on, check the bios settings.
Click to expand...

Thank you all! Apparently in the bios there is a setting called os install mode which needed to be turned off, because of the above reason, go figure.

So I got windows to install without any further issues. Thanks again!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top