RAM not recognized by Laptop

Rebs75

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Hi - Would really appreciate some help from the community regarding this small problem I'm facing.

I have a Compaq laptop (CQ50-215NR) which had Vista installed on it.The computer had begun to hang and crash so I decided to go back to XP.I installed XP SP3 and after installation I found that the OS is recognizing only 1.75 GB of RAM (on the System Properties Window:"sysdm.cpl") whereas the laptop has 2GB RAM installed.However the BIOS and on another CPU Monitoring software (CPUz) are indicating that 2GB of RAM is indeed installed.
Does this imply that 256 MB of RAM is lying unused.....or is it of no importance ?
Can someone please help me out with this ? Would really appreciate it.....

Thanks :)
 
Welcome to the forums!

+1 The RAM is probably being used by the IGP.

Your should have tried updating your drivers along with cleaning all the pre-installed junk software and startup items before ditching Vista.
In my experience, Vista is quite a bit more stable than Xp.
 

Rebs75

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However when the computer ran Vista earlier it always showed 2GB as the RAM available.And no hardware changes were made during the transition from Vista to XP.
 
I could be mistaken but I believe Vista accounts for the RAM differently than Xp.
Vista will show you the total amount of RAM installed where as Xp only shows you the amount it has available to use.

I just checked your Laptops Specs and it does have an IGP (nVidia 8400m) with shared memory.
I am almost certain there are no faults here, just differences on how Xp reports available RAM as compared to Vista.
 

Rebs75

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I'll take your word for it - Thanks.