Solved ACER Aspire 4 gig of ram only 1.74 usable, how can I fix?

[missingram]

Hi,

I hope I picked the right forum, if not, please move to the right place.

I have a ACER Aspire 5552-5686, Windows 7 family premium 64 bits with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 video card. I have latest version of my bios, 2.14

I have 4 gigs of RAM, but windows says only 1.74 is usable. This makes the system really small.

The bios says 256 megs is reserved for video card, but there is no way to change the value.

I installed the latest video card driver, it says 893 megs are used for video card. Here are the screen shots, sorry, french system:

Any help will be appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

 

[missingram]

bump! Anybody can help?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello and welcome missing go to and open the task manager - right click on the taskbar open tak manager and you should get a shot like in my pic. You can the see what is using the RAM

 

[Ztruker]

ICit2lol, isn't your pic from Windows 8?

Along with what ICit2lol mentioned, post a screen capture of Resource Monitor, Memory tab. See how much memory is assigned to Hardware reserved.

Open Task Manager, click on the Performance tab then click on Resource Monitor button.
Click on the Memory tab.

Mine looks like this:

 

[missingram]

Thanks for the answers.

Here`s the requested screen capture, seems like I have a lot of hardware reserved ram compared to you. I wonder why that is, since in the bios, it says only 256 megs are reserved for the graphic cards.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

ICit2lol, isn't your pic from Windows 8?

Along with what ICit2lol mentioned, post a screen capture of Resource Monitor, Memory tab. See how much memory is assigned to Hardware reserved.

Open Task Manager, click on the Performance tab then click on Resource Monitor button.
Click on the Memory tab.

Mine looks like this:

View attachment 280997

Yep Z I was just pointing the OP in the direction it is a shame that 8 didn't stay the same way as 7 but I thought it may be just as a hint as to where to look

Forgot my Ivy Bridge

 

[DavidE]

I found this old thread with the same type of issue.
You can read through it and see if any suggestions help you.
In the end it looks like this person ended up using Warranty Repair (hardware) to fix the issue...
http://www.sevenforums.com/performa...-4-gb-physical-memory-but-1-74-gb-usable.html

 

[ThrashZone]

Looks as though are systems are similar but not in the issue at hand,

 

[missingram]

Turns out one of the stick must have gotten loose, I removed both, one at a time and the computer worked both time showing 1.7 gig available. So I re-installed both and TADAM, 3.7 gig available now!

thanks for your help!

 

[ThrashZone]

Glad you cured the issue and thanks for updating your question,
Cheers.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

So simple eh? but I guess like we all do from time to time you think the worst

 

[ICIT2LOL]

So simple eh? but I guess like we all do from time to time you think the worst

PS mark as solved missingram