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For some reason, Windows 7 on my home computer has 4GB of ram as Hardware Reserved and I don't know why. I did a Google searched and tried several suggested solutions to fix the problem. I have updated the BIOS, disabled the onboard audio, and cleared the maximum memory in System Configuration in order to fix the problem. Each time I restart the computer after making the fix, the total memory in Resource Monitor would show total memory as 15.9 GB. However, the next time I started the computer again, the total ram will only be 11.9 GB.

My computer's hardware configuration is: Asus Sabertooth 990FX motherboard, an AMD FX8150 cpu, and an Intel 520 120GB SSD. It uses Windows 7 Home Premium with 16 GB of ram installed.

Any ideas from the board would be very appreciated.

What video card do you have?

Dominus Atheos wrote:What video card do you have?

PNY NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT.

A quick Googling showed all sorts of issues with that mainboard and RAM; you may have to RMA it.

Is that Windows 32 bit version or 64 bit version?

Irbis wrote:Is that Windows 32 bit version or 64 bit version?

Since the 32-bit version won't detect more than 4gb of ram, it's safe to say 64.

General Zod wrote:Since the 32-bit version won't detect more than 4gb of ram, it's safe to say 64.

That is incorrect. Win 32 bit can detect more than 4 gb, it can't address more that 4 gb, unless you add something like PAE or AWE (without going into too much details). My first, probably wrong guess was that the OP uses 16 GB PAE and last 4 GB are eaten by memory allocated to other stuff, like graphic card. My second guess would be that 4 GB are assigned to graphic card as extra memory, but then, OP said he checked BIOS thoroughly. Beyond that, there is too little data for further guesses.

Irbis wrote:

General Zod wrote:Since the 32-bit version won't detect more than 4gb of ram, it's safe to say 64.

That is incorrect. Win 32 bit can detect more than 4 gb, it can't address more that 4 gb, unless you add something like PAE or AWE (without going into too much details). My first, probably wrong guess was that the OP uses 16 GB PAE and last 4 GB are eaten by memory allocated to other stuff, like graphic card. My second guess would be that 4 GB are assigned to graphic card as extra memory, but then, OP said he checked BIOS thoroughly. Beyond that, there is too little data for further guesses.

Non-server versions of 32-bit Windows will not address more than 3.25GB even if PAE is enabled. DMA uses the upper memory addresses (which in a 64-bit processor and a 64-bit OS is well beyond any presently feasible amount of physical RAM).