Where's my RAM?

I was given a desktop computer (Gateway), and was told some of the “tower” components were replaced, etc. I think the motherboard was replaced, but there is an emblem identification piece in the front of the tower that says, “Powered by Albatron.” There’s no Gateway logo on the tower. Anyways, it’s about five years old.

It runs on Windows XP, home edition, version 2002, service pack 2. I got this information when I right-clicked the desktop computer icon and clicked on properties.

Other information: Intel Celeron(R) CPU 2.40GHz, 2.39 GHz, 96.0 MB of RAM.

The situation is this:

Prior to uninstalling unnecessary programs, deleting files, defragmenting the hard drive and “cleaning” out the hard drive, I noticed the MB of RAM in the properties tab was 128.0. After “cleaning” the hard drive, etc., there’s 96.0 MB of RAM now.

A friend told me that the 32 MB of RAM went to support other “areas” in the computer.

The reason for bringing this up is because I want to install WordPerfect and other programs and they require at least 128 MB of RAM. As I began the installation process, a message indicated that my computer has not met the requirement of 128 MB of RAM, so I didn’t install the programs.

What happened to the 32 MB of RAM? And how can I find out where it was dispersed? How do I change it back to 128? It’s been puzzling me how it changed from 128 to 96.

Thanks, Megaman

I don’t think it has anything to do with the “cleaning”.
Either you really have 96MB of memory, or you may have a shared memory for the video card - which is using those 32MB for itself.

How do I find out where the other 32 MB of RAM is located? Can I still install the WordPerfect programs even if I don’t have the 128 required? Is it possible that the 32 MB of RAM “expired” and no longer works? Thanks, Mega

How do I find out where the other 32 MB of RAM went? You mentioned about the shared memory on the video card. How do I check that? Thanks, Megaman

I guess you will have to find a memory utility that gives the breakdown of allocated memory.

If you only have one 128MB RAM stick, if any of it expired, it would probably completely corrupt the stick and you system would continually experience issues, crashing, etc. Running XP with 128MB of RAM is in my opinion too little, especially if part of that is allocated to onboard graphics. I would recommend at least another 128MB stick and you should see a noticeable improvement in system performance.

I could be wrong (often), but there may be a setting in the BIOS that allocates how much memory is allocated to onboard graphics, that is assuming you have a graphics chip on youyr motherboard, you haven’t confirmed that yet.

If you only have one 128MB RAM stick, if any of it expired, it would probably completely corrupt the stick and you system would continually experience issues, crashing, etc. Running XP with 128MB of RAM is in my opinion too little, especially if part of that is allocated to onboard graphics. I would recommend at least another 128MB stick and you should see a noticeable improvement in system performance.
512MB of RAM is recommended. Yet, 256MB is fine to actually run Windows Xp just fine.
I could be wrong (often), but there may be a setting in the BIOS that allocates how much memory is allocated to onboard graphics, that is assuming you have a graphics chip on your motherboard, you haven't confirmed that yet.
I'm sure the BIOS has an option to set the MB on the onboard graphics if the MoBo contains onboard that is.