While I would agree that Windows 7 is not mentioned under "compatible operating systems, I do have a number of these HP Dc7600SFF systems with labels stuck on them stating that they are "Vista Compatible." Since Windows 7 is Vista redone., someone at HP took the time to make it compatible with Vista, yet that's not mentioned under compatible OS either. Surely someone has dealt with this before and can say definitively and technically what's going on. Why have the ability to install 4gb of ram if you can't access it? That makes no sense.
What I really need to determine here is whether or not installing 4gb in these systems is a waste of time and money or can the entire amount be accessed? Is there a workaround either thru an existing BIOS setting or something on the motherboard that needs to changesd? I haven't dealt with these systems in the past, so I'm not aware of any solution for this problem.
Not that it really matters, most of these systems have a lowprofile pcie video card with 1024mb ram onboard already installed. So by my math, it would seem that unless there is a workaround to this problem of usable memory, we are losing a gigabyte of ram needlessly in trying to implement a 64-bit solution. Even without the video card, the onboard Intel video solution would still yield over 3.9gb of memory available, if we could access the entire 4gb installed. So while the HP Diagnostic program, the BIOS itself, CPUZ v168 all seem to recognize the entire 4gb installed, we seem to have run into some kind of artificial OS barrier created by HP. I certainly would never have recommended their purchase given what appears to be a proprietary limitation introduced where there should not be none. Again, Why allow the installation of 4gb, if you can't use it?? I would again like to know the technical reason why the barrier even exists. Maybe these systems were never intended to use 64-bit OS. Yet they were also labeled as being Vista Compatible. Of course, the label doesn't say whether they just mean 32-bit or does that include 64-bit.
We were curious, of course, since many of these units say they are "Vista Compatible." What did that mean, given our issue with the 64-bit version of Windows 7. We installed the 64-bit version of Vista Ultimate SP2 to see if this was a global or OS-specific problem. Afterall , somebody at HP determined that they were Vista Compatible, yet that compatibility is NOT defined as such on the web page for this model. What's really interesting about all this is that when you go into System in Vista's Control panel, you see OS is identified as a 64-bit operating system and that the INSTALLED MEMORY IS CORRECT AS 4GB (all usable). By this does one can say that Vista IS Compatible (like the label, but Windows 7 is NOT.
So as you can see, we did try to identify what was going on here. However, we thought that going to Olympus for the last word was still the better choice. Well, at least I did. Maybe someone found a way around this. I'm still hoping that someone here has found the way to make this work. I appreciate and thank you all for your suggestions.