Installed vs total physical memory

[LisaLisa]

In the process of trying to figure out which bios version I have in my computer, I came across the "system information" page. I think its called msinfo32. Well, I happened to notice a huge difference in the "installed physical memory(ram)", "total physical memory" and "available physical memory".

installed physical memory (ram) 1.00GB
total physical memory 958MB
available physical memory 281MB

Installed memory 1GB and physical memory 958MB.....megabytes?? Only 281mb abvailable? Am I missing something here or does that sound incorrect?

here are my specs-
hp pavillion dv2000 laptop
windows vista home premium sp2
x86-based pc
amd turion 64 x2, 1600mhz, 2 cores, 2 logical processors

I am no computer expert and barley a novice, but this seemed odd.
Thanks in advance for any input

[Champak]

Hey I just suggest you to install system software like CPUZ OR Everest on your machine.
It will give you complete information about your system hardware & drivers status. It will help you understand what is wrong in your system.

Hope this helps.

[sakthiganeshj]

Hey, nothing wrong with the system. Installed physical memory indicates the actual memory module size, Total Physical memory indicates the amount of memory available for the OS to work on (or allocate to other applications). The difference between the installed and Total value could be due to the amount of memory allocated to your on board video card. This can generally be modified via the BIOS screen. Available physical memory is the amount of memory that is left free after the consumption by the operating System and the other applications. I am surprised that you have got 281MB left with Vista running Move to Win7, it is much much better than Vista interms of performance and speed