Why is my computer only showing 2gb RAM when i have 4gb?

[RegalHawk]

I have been looking the answer to my problem about Microsoft Windows XP saying i have 2gb RAM when i know i put in 4gb. i have been looking around for the answer for quite a while and everything seems to confuse me. Some people have reported only being able to see 3.5gb memory when they have 4gb and i would like to be able to get at least that high in RAM and if not then 4gb. I found this on microsoft and i am not sure what it does or anything: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/181862
My Computer Specs are below;
Gigabyte i-DNA series motherboard GA-8N-SLI PRO
Dual Bios (it also says:) Adward sofware international, inc f4
Pentium 4 CPU 3.4ghz x86 Family 15model 4 stepping 1
nVIDIA GeForce 7800 Graphics Card

Please help me.

[Suspishio]

There's another thread here that deals with the 3.5GB report against 4GB actual and it points to a relevant MS KB article.

But in your case it'll be something else. I presume you've got the memory specs right and teverything is nice and symmetrical.

What does the BIOS report when booting up?

[Serunson]

Have you checked that you actually only have 2Gb of RAM? May be worth checking. Also how many sticks of the RAM do you have?

[RegalHawk]

i have 4 sticks each 1gb (i renember because i helped make i). I don't have a chance to see what the Bios says so i am not sure about that. But this isn't really my biggest concern because something really weird happened to my computer the other day when i put on nTUNE and easytune (because i was having weird flashes across the screen of white when i was playing games and then the game would freeze so i got these to see if i could fix it) and now the computer keeps freezing when it boots up, like some times at the gigabyte logo sometimes at the windows logon or booting display. And so i am going to be focusing more on that as i canot get into safe mode because the keyboard and mouse doesn't seem to work anymore. so i am stuffed for now.

[Suspishio]

Acknowledging that you maynot be able to get onto the forum to read this stuff ...

When you boot up (right at the start of boot-up), press the Del key or F1 or F2 or whatever your motherboard manual tells you to get into the BIOS. Then you can check your system RAM at BIOS level. It should read 4GB.

If it doesn't then there are a number of checks you can make:
1/
The 4 x 1GB modules are of the same type and speed and none of them is rated at a slower speed than your motherbaord

2/
That they are seated properly.

It does seem to me to be a hardware problem.

[RegalHawk]

Ok here it is. My sneaky cousin (whos spare parts we used to make this computer) stole my 4gb. He put it in is other computer (hes got 2 excluding the one we both made) a dell. He swapped them so he gave me 4x512mb. Very sneaky. cheap cheap cheap. Sorry about this, i must seem very dumb right now.

[Tezdoll]

No, your cousin does. i would recommend not letting him do anything to your machines anymore.