Reclaiming lost RAM

[Henrythedragon]

I upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows XP eight months ago. I have 192 MB of RAM installed on on my PC. I recently did a clean install of Windows XP pro to fix some problems I was having. Afterward, my system properties read that I have 184 MB of RAM, where did the missing 8 MB of RAM go? Is there any way to reclaim it without using third party software?

[Low Level Owl]

What kind of setup do you have? Does the motherboard have onboard video? If it does, it's possible that those 8MB are reserved for your video card.

[Henrythedragon]

I have 8MB allocated to video memory, however,
just a few days ago, before I reinstalled XP, my system properties read that I have 192MB installed, it now says I have 184MB installed. Why the change?
Could I have 8 MB of RAM in a different partition? If this is so, is there a way I can reclaim this RAM without having to use third party software?

[mrwilhelm]

I just did a ME to XP upgrade for a family member and their RAM went from 128MB to 124MB. Not coincidentally they have integrated video using 4MB of RAM.

This is just a guess, but I'd say that in all likelihood XP merely changes the way the OS reports the RAM. While previous OS's reported the total memory, XP only reports available memory. If I'm right it means that you can't reclaim it because you never had it (since it's reserved for the on-board video).

[Sly]

You can play with the Bios settings under video memory, there should be settings for 2mb, 4mb, 6mb, and 8mb, if you have shared memory with the video.

[mrwilhelm]

I thought of that, and it would certainly be an option if you've added a real video card and are no longer using the on-board video, but would you really want to do that if you're still using the integrated video? 8MB is pretty painful as it is, I can't imagine why anyone would want to reduce that further simply to add a few more MB's to their system memory.