Strange 7MB of unformatted hard disk, after reinstalling XP!

Hi, I have recently done a format on one of my friends machines and all went well until we had to choose what type of format to do. Normally there is just one large partition to format, but this time there was a big partition and '7MB' that wasnt formated. So we went ahead and completed the installation of windows Xp home and all was fine until we checked how much memory he had. He had gone from SDRAM memory of 256 to a memory of 248!!

We really done know what has happened for him to lose 7MB of memory during the reformat. I think we need to change some Bios settings may be, but i dont know where to start, so all help is very welcome espically if there are any bios experts around.

He has a old laptop that is running Windows XP Home, Bios a PheonixBIOS (system bios: version 4.04/KBC bios: version 1.00), supposed to be 256 SDRAM

Phantom

 

Hi, Ronjor thanks for your help, is there any way of knowing if this is down to bad Bios settings or down to the on board graphics using this memory? If it is the Bios settings, any idea what we need to change in order to fix this very strange problem? Thanks again for taking the time to help,

Phantom66

 

This is quite normal and please DO NOT try to reclaim it.

how did you read/check the memory

 

hi, hadi we looked using System information and the tool Ronjor suggested, both show sonething like 247/8. So very strange!

 

1- for the 7Mb that wasn’t formatted. This is absolutely normal and here again I do repeat DO NOT try to reclaim the 7Mb back with another software like PartitionMagic or similar. Let windows “tailor” its own partition its own way. I solved some awkward problems by deleting the entire disk partition and letting Windows re-format it from scratch and there is always this 7 , 8 or more Mb left unformatted.

2- for the memory. This could be a decimal /binary issue. The manufacturers refer to kilo as 1000 (the decimal system we human use in every day life) while for binary the computer system (on/off). kilo is defined to be =1024. Therefore

1 Mega=1000*1000=1,000,000 <- decimal
1 Mega=1024*1024=1,048,576 <- binary

Try to read the memory directly from the BIOS, or through other program. BTW ccleaner can read the memory. It can be seen on its top grey bar with other useful info.