Recently I purchased a new laptop and immediately sought to protect it from viruses so I installed Avast home edition; I’ve used Avast in the past and it always seemed to work well. Then however I got some pc games that I wanted to try out. The computer came w/ 512mb of ram (I think I saw that on My Comp. properties too), when I installed Avast this dropped to 448mb. I haven’t been able to run the games with low memory so I tried uninstalling Avast but it seems to read the same memory as when it was installed. How do I recover this memory? There are fewer processes running on the comp now, but no change.
What operating system do you use?
Where exactly do you see the size of memory? A screenshot might be helpful.
What is the exact message you get when trying to run the games?
It is Windows XP Home edition; I’ve checked the memory in My Computer properties and with System Monitor. When I run the EverquestII demo installer it says “system does not meet requirements: 448<512mb memory”
Test your RAM modules with “memtest86”. Or check if your PC checks up over 510.000 kilbytes at PC startup (when you see the boot screen with processor speed and attached disks and optical devices).
If number there is only over 400.000 there is something wrong with your modules. Memtest86 will tell you more (if it founds any errors).
I don’t see a memory test at startup and I searched the computer for memtest86 there doesn’t seem to be an .exe or any file. When in F2 computer setup before windows boot it says: system memory 640kb, extended memory 446mb. Also the “system info” links are telling me total physical memory is 512mb, but the “toshiba laptop maximizer” program says total physical memory is 448mb. It is Toshiba P35-S611 model- I just reinstalled Avast and there doesn’t seem to be a change in this memory, when I stop on-access protection I can see the memory go up in the task manager but only by 4-6mb, maybe I don’t fully understand what is happening. I just need to know how I can use the memory that the manufacturer claims it has. I would like to use Avast if possible. When I uninstalled Avast before I had forgotten to shut it down, could that have made a difference in the uninstall?
It appears to me that you have faulty memory modules in your computer.
You should have over 500MB of extended memory detected on bootup.
Memtest86 is a non-microsoft applications (you can’t find it on PC by default). You’ll have to download it here:
http://www.memtest86.com
Use the bootable ISO image and burn it to CD. Just boot the computer with that CD and memory test will start automatically.
In my opinion:
- this has nothing to do with avast!, or its uninstallation - it certainly cannot affect the system this way
- this is not a “faulty memory” problem - if 50MB of memory were corrupted, the system would hardly be able to boot to Windows
I think that you simply have a part of your RAM shared with your graphics adapter - so, even though you have 512MB, a part of it is not normally available because the videocard uses it. I don’t think you can do anything about it, though - you might be able to decrease the size (probably somewhere in BIOS settings), but the adapter has to use some memory.
I can be wrong, of course, but this seems to be a likely explanation to me.
I found the majority of the problem, the video card uses shared memory, I had turned it up to 64mb at some point; If I turn it down to 16mb I get 496mb with Avast installed, which seems much more normal and allowable. The shared video takes up a lot of ram, I will have to purchase more memory to compensate. Other than that there are some other miscellaneous programs on here that seem to take from the manufacturers claim, I’ll have to see if it can be streamlined. Thanks for the help
igor,i didn’t knew he was using integrated graphic card which shares framebuffer with local memory. Anyway,i’m glad you found out the reason 
Well, I also didn’t know, but it seemed likely 
We were typing at the same time, I tried to post and it said “someone just posted”- you’re a genius, Igor haha. Mystery solved.