Take the 2-minute tour ×

I have a new HP Z800 Workstation, running Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit. Z800 Specs are here.

The machine has 4GB of RAM -- windows reported 1.99GB available, 2GB was "hardware reserved". I added another 2 GB and windows reports that there is 6GB of physical RAM, but now 4GB is "hardware reserved". The BIOS sees the full RAM amount as well.

The video card is an nVidia Quadro FX 580, so it shouldn't be using any shared memory at all.

Why is all my extra RAM marked as "hardware reserved" in Windows 7?

share|improve this question

8 Answers 8

up vote 23 down vote accepted

Turns out that the installed RAM was in an unsupported config -- On this machine, if you install 2GB chips, they have to be installed in triple, as referenced here (pdf).

Its interesting to note that Windows saw the memory, but it was rendered not usable and marked as "hardware reserved".

share|improve this answer
+1 Very interesting. :-) –  Mehrdad Apr 4 '11 at 3:26

Ouch, sad to hear about the re-install.

There is a great Mark Russinovich Blog post that explains how windows uses physical memory.

  1. Hardware devices can reserve large blocks of physical address space... To see if a piece of hardware is reserving a large chunk of physical address space, launch "devmgmt.msc", select Resources by Connection in the View Menu, and expand the Memory node. (Mark's blog explains this further.)

  2. Even though your video card has onboard, fast, dedicated video memory, Windows still has to address and interact with that memory using the same physical memory addressing that is uses for RAM, PCI devices and other devices. This can crowd the physical address space. 64 bit OS should cope better with this than a 32 bit OS, but its hands may still be tied some device requirements.
    (My Dell has 700 MB hardware reserved on Win7x64. It's not nearly as bad as your issue, but still annoying.)

  3. It would be helpful to know if a tool like memtest (which boots and runs without windows) can see all of the installed RAM. Try some of the system info tools on the UBCD to see if they can see (and test) all of your RAM. This would let you know if Windows has even has anything to do with it.

As a final thought, you bought it new from a major vendor, you should be able to get a support from them, and ask them about the issue. They can often get to the bottom of this sort of issue much faster than searching around on the internet, and you've already paid for this service.

Edit: this SO question may be related to your issue, and there is another good explanation of the how memory-mapped IO reservations can reduce the usable RAM. Again, this may not be exactly the problem you are facing, but those blogs tell you how you can determine if it is.

Let us know.

share|improve this answer
+1 for the UBCD link -- going to try that now. –  ericvg Nov 2 '09 at 18:03

I had this same issue and have fixed it on my particular machine. I was showing 4G reserved in HW. I went into the MB BIOS and under chipset configuration/ internal graphics/

I changed the setting for Frame Buffer Location from [Above 4G] to [Below 4G}... and now i have 1MB in HW reserved and not 4G. Windows sees all *G as usable

share|improve this answer

I have this exact problem fixed! With Gigabyte p55a ud3r and Kingston KHX1600C9D3K4/8GX.

When you buy RAM, you get it in pairs, as it turned out each pair/memory stick can only work on memory channel 1 or memory channel 2.

If you put a pair of memory that designed to work only on channel 1, on channel 2 (like I did unknowingly). The BIOS only recognizes them, "BUT" not made available to use. Windows 7 can only see the total RAM installed (in my case 8 GB), but can't make use of the other 4 GBs on memory channel 2, and Windows 7 thinks the 4 GB memory are "HARDWARE RESERVED".

So I advise you to switch them up between the memory slots, like I did, and now I only have 5 MB HARDWARE RESERVED instead of 4 GB like before when I put the RAM sticks on the wrongs slots/channel.

share|improve this answer

Maybe updating BIOS would help? Also, try enabling Memory Remaping in BIOS, or something like this, if you manage to find it in your SETUP.

share|improve this answer
Also, I found out, that the HP Z800 comes with 2GB of RAM by default... Maybe HP just don't want users to add more? Silly, I know... :) –  sYnfo Oct 16 '09 at 15:51
According to the specs, that model can actually support 192GB if the O/S and other hardware allows it –  CodeByMoonlight Oct 16 '09 at 16:22

I had a similar problem with a Samsung R519. In my case I upgraded from 2gb to 4gb RAM but I only have a 32bit OS on my machine. So in my case that is the limiting factor as 32bit OS will only see 3gb max.

share|improve this answer

At this link I found this possible solution: Well everyone, here is a great attempt to configure the usable RAM in a Windows 7 x64 system. Go to Run and type msconfig. Once you do this a box will come up and then go to the boot tab. On advanced options on the boot you will find two options, number of processors and max memory. Select the box max memory and it should automatically put the amount of memory installed. Once you reboot it will allocate more memory to your sytem but still hold a bit back for hardware requirements. Like mine has 8 GB and has only 6.75 GB usable. If you check the resource monitor it shows that I have 6.91 GB available to me directly and the rest to hardware requirements. Without doing this process, I had added 8 GB and only 2 GB was usable.

Not sure if this helps, though...

share|improve this answer
That tab in msconfig is usually used for troubleshooting boot. I'm not sure it helps. –  alex Oct 16 '09 at 14:35
I tried that, and the machine blue screened after rebooting. Couldn't even system repair it. Reinstalling Win7 64 now. Perhaps it'll pick up on the RAM during a fresh install. –  ericvg Oct 16 '09 at 16:44
no luck on the reinstall. –  ericvg Oct 16 '09 at 20:27
Yikes! Well, at least I now know to wait with a Windows 64-bits upgrade for my current system. –  Wim ten Brink Oct 17 '09 at 11:45
Tried with no luck. If you open the panel again, it changes the number from max to 0. –  balupton Sep 16 at 12:14

For anyone still having this issue:

  1. Press Start -> Run

  2. Type msconfig

  3. Go under the "Boot" tab

  4. Click "Advanced options" button

  5. Uncheck "Maximum memory"

    enter image description here

  6. Reboot

Helped for me, got still reserved only 9 Mb from totally of 6 Gb.

share|improve this answer

protected by random Sep 19 '12 at 0:20


Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?
