New ram help

I just put in 2 more gigs of ram, when I check my system though it's only showing just over 3 gigs it looks like. Can anyone help me to make sure I installed them both properly and they are being used properly?

Sounds like you are using a 32-bit operating system like XP or 32-bit Vista or Windows 7. Due to the way the PC is designed, devices like video cards, hard drive controllers, etc. gets first dibs on memory addresses. Any unused memory addresses are available to system memory. Since a 32-bit OS can only has 4GB of memory addresses, you will end up with less than 4GB of system memory even if you stick 4GB into your system. Commonly you will end up with 3-3.5GB depending.

However if you ever upgrade to a 64-bit OS, you will see all 4GB.

Task Manager and "performance" tab opens up a memory monitoring program. You can see what is being seen by the OS there.

As FatherXmas said, your system can only use what the OS limitations allow it to use, be it XP/Vista/7, so even if they are installed properly, you will only see what the OS can use.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html is a great lil program that has some memory monitor functions as well if you'd like more info on your system memory.

Try Memtest86
http://pcsupport.about.com/gi/o.htm?...memtest86.com/

It is the best memory test made and it will show all of your memory and also lets you test every subsystem.

Ok thanks! Everything checks out working well. The new ram is actually better than what I had installed prior, higher MHz