Incorrect RAM shown - missing?

[ldreamr]

Hi,

My laptop (eMachines m5309) has slowed down somewhat over the past few
months, and one problem I've found may be that it is supposed to have
512 MB RAM, but everything shows that it has about 256 MB -- everything
except System Information, which says 512.50. But BIOS, My Computer >
Properties, and Task Manager > Performance all give figures that hover
pretty close to 256 MB. I have zero hardware knowledge so I haven't
done anything to this machine since I bought it a year ago.

Help! Can anyone tell me what's going on?


Thanks,
David

 

[Jerry]

Go to www.crucial.com and run their memory tester.

 

[deebs]

There's a rather neat MS RAM tester and if I remember rightly, it runs
from floppy disk

Is the laptop hard disk approaching 70% fill?

The reason I ask is my emachines laptop slows down and it seems to be
associated with disk usage reaching 70%. A clear out of data or
archiving stuff to CD soon returns a swifter running laptop

 

[Guest]

Another thing you need to check is does the video card share the ram i know
that on some machines the video memory is a shared portion of the ram and it
is controlled by the bios.

 

[Richard in AZ]

Where on the crucial web site do you find their memory tester?

 

[ldreamr]

My 60 GB HD is only about a quarter full, so I don't think that's the
problem. And I've heard about the video card sharing, but my video
card only takes up 128 MB. Since I am supposed to have 512, and it
only shows 256, even if I subtract 128 from 512 I am still missing 128
MB.

I did the Crucial scan (bottom of the left menu bar, "System Scanner")
and it told me that I have 512 MB. So where did the rest of it go?

 

[deebs]

Is there a BIOS memtest on display at start up?

 

[ldreamr]

No, I don't see anything like that.