Why does my bootable vhdx windows 10 Enterprise installation report 5.7GB of Hardware Reserved Memory

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My laptop has 8GB of memory installed and I'm running windows 10 as my primary operating system. I have also created a bootable Windows 10 Enterprise vhdx using Hyper-V so I have an isolated development environment.

When I boot the vhdx in the host operating system using Hyper-V the memory reported is as expected (I've capped it to 4GB). But when I boot it natively via the windows boot menu it reports 5.7GB of memory Hardware Reserved and approx 2GB usable.

I've checked msconfig and the maximum memory flag hasn't been set for the OS.

The memory cap in Hyper-V manager is set to 6GB, not sure this is relevent though as I'm not kicking the image off using Hyper-V

Nattrass

Posted 2015-09-16T10:08:05.353

Reputation: 103

1looks like you used the 32Bit Windows 10. – magicandre1981 – 2015-09-16T15:50:10.597

Ok, i'll check that. But I would expect more than 2GB of memory to be available in that case. What is confusing me is that this doesn't happen when booting via Hyper-V. Just a native boot. – Nattrass – 2015-09-17T08:36:50.910

@magicandre1981 that was exactly what the problem was. School boy error. Thanks – Nattrass – 2015-09-19T13:34:07.830

ok, I posted it as answer. – magicandre1981 – 2015-09-19T18:24:48.783

Answers

1

If you have such a large amount of hardware reserved memory it mostly happens because you used a 32Bit (x86) and not a 64Bit (x64) Windows. So make sure you sue a 64Bit Windows. Look into the system properties to look which version do you use:

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magicandre1981

Posted 2015-09-16T10:08:05.353

Reputation: 86 560

Asked: 2015-09-16T10:08:05.353

Viewed: 152 times

Active: 2015-09-19T18:24:38.670