Dimension 4600 RAM Upgrade

chucky321 · Fri Jul 09, 2010 9:46 pm

Hi everyone,

I have an old Dell Dimension 4600 that came with two sticks of 128 RAM. It has 4 slots and can be upgraded to 4g of RAM. I bought 4 sticks of 1g RAM and installed them. Now when I boot the pc it says it can only use 256 and gives me the option to continue booting or use the setup utility. In the setup utility under memory it lists 4096 RAM. When I go to Windows (XP 32bit) it only lists the 256 RAM. I'm new to doing hardware upgrades and am not sure if I need to rewrite the BIOS or upgrade to 64bit Windows or what. I've read the BIOS updates for the version I'm running (A10) and it doesn't list anything about increasing RAM. So, I'm pretty much lost at this point. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Fri Jul 09, 2010 10:49 pm

When you leave the setup utility does it ask you to save changes and exit? If so, save changes. If not, power down, remove 2 sticks of ram and see if that works. 32bit windows is only good up to about 3 - 3.5GB of ram, 4GB may be just too much too handle.

Sat Jul 10, 2010 7:50 am

WinXP works fine with 4 GiB RAM installed. It's just the problem it is only capable to use ~3.2 GB due to the space limitations with 32Bit adresses.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloa ... id=&impid=

chucky321 · Sat Jul 10, 2010 2:49 pm

Yes edwin it does ask to save changes and continue. Should I remove a stick and try that to see if it works? Denniss I followed your link and the A12 bios is on there. Should I try and flash from my A10 version to A12? Thanks!

BiosMan · Sun Jul 11, 2010 12:45 pm

I own a Dell Dimension 4600i, and have the A12 BIOS installed.

Are you sure that all of your memory sticks are non-ECC, PC2700 (or PC3200) DDR?

Thanks.

chucky321 · Sun Jul 11, 2010 9:32 pm

I'm sure they are DDR. At first I ordered the wrong sticks and had to return them because the pins were wrong. I don't have my receipt anymore from when I purchased them. How do I know if they are non-ECC, PC2700 or PC3200?

Thanks!

chucky321 · Wed Jul 14, 2010 3:41 am

Ok, so I did some digging and found the receipt that I thought was gone. The memory sticks I have are Kingston PC3200 1GB DDR 128x64. Tried using just two of the sticks with no luck. Tried using just three of the sticks, still with no luck. The message says "Memory limited to 256mb". The BIOS registers all the memory. The AGP aperture is limited to 256mb, but I didn't think that had anything to do with the amount of memory you could use for RAM. I'm also running an Intel Pentium 4 processor @ 2.8ghz, 2.79ghz with Windows XP 32bit. If I have to rewrite the bios, how do I go about doing that? Thanks!!!

chucky321 · Wed Jul 14, 2010 4:51 am

Update, I also tried using the original two sticks of DDR 3200 in conjunction with two of the new 1gig sticks. I'm thinking I need to edit the BIOS but have never done it before and could use some guidance. Thanks!!!

BiosMan · Wed Jul 14, 2010 12:30 pm

Is the BIOS "OS Install Mode" feature set to "Off"?

Thanks.

chucky321 · Wed Jul 14, 2010 1:28 pm

No, the BIOS Install mode is set to ON. I checked that in the setup utility as well. I don't know if dell uses a chipset on the motherboard for the BIOS or a ROM. I guess I need to research the motherboard to find out because I read that if a ROM was used then you can't edit the BIOS without the ROM.

Wed Jul 14, 2010 8:06 pm

BIOS "OS Install Mode" feature must be set to "Off", else it limits the total memory to 256MB.

chucky321 · Wed Jul 14, 2010 10:46 pm

Now I will hit my "easy" button and cry tears of joy. Thanks Edwin!!!

Thu Jul 15, 2010 8:56 am

The idea came from KachiWachi.
(Giving credit where credit is due).

Happy computing chucky...

BiosMan · Fri Jul 16, 2010 12:30 pm

edwin wrote: The idea came from KachiWachi.
(Giving credit where credit is due).

Thanks edwin.

chucky321 · Fri Jul 16, 2010 8:30 pm

Of course Kachi, didn't mean to give the credit away

. Thank you and Edwin, and Denniss all for your excellent help!