hey all. I've tried different ram, a different windows version, I've messed around in bios and updated it as well. How can i get my pc to register the rest of my ram??
If a big chunk of ram isn't available this is usually because your system is using at as video memory, typically in the absence of a full GPU card. If you don't do a ton of gaming or video editing you can probably go into the BIOS and reduce your video memory to 1-2GB, or if you have a separate GPU then set it to as low as possible.
This sounds like a problem we had back in the 32bit days. Video memory from the GPU is mapped into the normal memory space. Systems with 4GB could never use all of it because of that.
This still happens with 64bit systems, but the address space is so big the video memory doesn't overlap with system memory addresses anymore.
I think there is a BIOS setting to force that mapping into back into the first part of addresses. Might want to find that setting and make sure it is off.
Mine is under the advanced tab and video memory. Of course my computer is 10 years old though so it has an actual BIOS, newer computers have a similar UEFI menu.