Member Avatar for lloydmav

Hi,

I've just installed 512mb ram on my laptop, running windows xp home. I had to do this becuase it was only running 128 before aahh. Now I don't know very much about this but when I had a look at System in the control panel it tells me I'm only running 496mb ram. Is this normal?, is there are reason for this?, and is there anything I can do about it?
Also as a side note when I look at how much free memory I have when I'm not running any applications it is only about 282mb ram, does this sound about normal?

I would appreciate any help you could give me

Cheers

Lloyd

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by caperjack
Member Avatar for caperjack

the first one sounds like memory shared for Video .
the second sound about right the more memory you give windows the more it uses just to boot up ,{Mine is at 768\554 ,with only noticible thing running is norton and IE},you might not think you are running anything ,but there is always a lot running in the background .
check inStart\ Run\ type in MSCONFIG go to STARTUP ,and see just what runs in the background

Member Avatar for lloydmav

Thanks for the reply, I thought the second would probably be ok, but I'm not sure what you mean by memory shared for video. I was under the impression that when you go to control panel- system - general tab it should tell you exactly how much memory you have installed e.g. 512mb. I thought maybe the ram had got damaged when I installed it or maybe it was becuase of the ram architecture or something? I don't really have a clue, but all the computers I've seen display the amount of ram correctly,

Thanks

Lloyd

Member Avatar for caperjack

Thanks for the reply, I thought the second would probably be ok, but I'm not sure what you mean by memory shared for video. I was under the impression that when you go to control panel- system - general tab it should tell you exactly how much memory you have installed e.g. 512mb. Thanks

Lloyd

If a computer has onboard[built into the motherboard ] video ,and not a serparate PCI or AGP video card ,it will share the system ram ,and it will not show in control panel /system .

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