Saturday, September 4, 2010

Ubuntu detecting less RAM

OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
Kernel: 2.6.32-24-generic and 2.6.32-24-generic-pae
Date: Sept 4th, 2010

Hey everyone,
 We bought new 2gig RAMs (2 modules) for my room mates laptop, we were pretty excited. BIOS detected it well, however Ubuntu showed up with 2.92GB RAM, even if he had shared video memory it would never be 1GB.
 So I looked around and found out that if you are using 32 bit OS over 64 bit hardware (processor), Generic kernel can't detect any more than 3GB of RAM.
 So solution for using 4GB RAM (more than 3GB) is to have 64 bit OS for 64 bit hardware or else use PAE kernel instead of generic.
  • Just search for PAE kernel in synaptic and install proper kernel package, restart the computer and you are good to go 
Enjoy

This solution was posted at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1402138 last checked Sept 4th, 2010