I bought 8gb of used DDR3 PC3-12800 RAM and after installing it, 4.1gb of it is hardware reserved. I've tried taking out all other RAM sticks and just booting with this single stick (which only worked after moving it to a different RAM slot) and it will boot but again with the 4.1gb reserved.
I've tried msconfig advanced options to make sure all of it is utilized, but doing so doesn't make a difference. Windows memory diagnostic finds no issue either.
Some things to note:
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this stick was actually exchanged for another I purchased and took back as it came up as all 8gb as being hardware reserved, shortly before dying completely
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I have a further 2gb of RAM which I installed a while back which runs perfectly
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My motherboard (https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c03757575 , MSI MS-7778) supports the RAM and supports up to 32gb, I will adding this extra 8gb to have 14gb total
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There are no BIOS settings relating to memory (very barebones) and I have even reset to default settings. Fast boot is also turned off.
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AFAIK the BIOS is up to date, however i'm going to try and update it once this thread is posted.
If anyone has anything that I could try, pls let me know