Solved Task Manager only recognizes half my RAM

[RogerR]

While investigating a laggy desktop and some apparent RAM thrashing issues, I found his system has 8 megs of DDR2 installed (confirmed by Speccy) but Task Manager is only reporting 3324 MB total physical memory.

Any ideas on why?

I've been through the usual list of searching out high-utilization processes, malware etc but find no clues.

 

[RoasterMen]

Have you checked if it is a 64-bit windows? 32-bit can only use around ~3.5GB

 

[RogerR]

Good call. It was hiding in plain sight!

Reinstall ... ugh.

 

[mrjimphelps]

You could make use of that extra RAM by making it into a RAM Disk:

http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php

If you put your TEMP folder on the RAM disk, some tasks would perform a lot faster. And you'd have less wear and tear on your hard drive. Back in the day, I created a RAM disk and put my TEMP folder on it. I then installed a program. It installed lightning fast, because all of the temp files were kept on the RAM disk!