Usable memory -- WITH A TWIST :O

I know you've probably seen dozens of threads like this, but here's an interesting twist:



The laptop it's on (the Compaq Presario V2000) only has 512MB of RAM, and is showing only 383 available. Nothing near the level of the OS restrictions. (Besides, it's 64-bit.) I've already tried the solution here, but the "maximum memory" box was unchecked.

Any insight?

The laptop is reserving 128MB of system memory for the GPU.

Interesting... shouldn't it label it "reserved" then, or just list 383MB? My understanding was that the shared memory allocation happened at the BIOS level, and the OS never saw the change.

Geez - You installed a 64Bit OS on 512MB memory when the suggested configuration for the 32Bit is 1GB memory. I was under the impression that 64Bit required 2GB memory atleast

If you're going to use that laptop for some time, I'd buy some extra RAM - you'll notice a BIG difference with 2GB in there

It's just an issue of symantecs, reserved/useable. If it only listed 383MB then you would be even more confused... Vista did this at one time and we had users asking where their missing RAM was at...

I agree, I'm appalled it even allowed the install. 64bit installs should not be run on less than 2GB, you'd get better OS performance with a 32bit machine when only 1GB or less of memory is available.

This is just wrong! LOL!