I have 640 megs of RAM in my Compaq Presido, hey it was cheap for the extra RAM $62 for 512 megs. When I monitor the RAM usage, it seems like I can only use 256megs of the RAM (390 megs remain unused). Even though System Resources my be as low as 10%. How do I get System Resources to use more of the RAM. Now, I can run some java applications using the -Xms and -Xmx options to use more memory and I have gotten the memory available down to around 300 megs. How do I get ME to use more of the RAM?

System resources has little to do with RAM and is a limited and small area of memory used by Windows to store various components every time you use a program, e.g. buttons, boxes, menus etc. When you close the program not all the system resource memory may be released and as your work builds up during the day you may run out of resources, or if you open a lot of programs together the same thing may happen (by the way Norton System Doctor hogs these resources if it is running, so shut it down first). The best cure is to reboot occasionally during the day. I make it a habit (a tedious but necessary one) to reboot whenever a game has been played on any of the PCs for which I am responsible because they can cause havoc with system resources and to reboot whenever strange things start happening, like delays opening things, etc. On the issues of maximum RAM which ME can use and how to tweak it, look at the link below, but if your RAM is not being used above 256 it may mean that whatever you are doing doesn't need it. http://www.computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/18829.html

what kind of ram is it, pc 133? is your motherboard kind of old? it could be the additional ram isn't recognized by it (cmos chip?). maybe an upgrade to your bios would help. i had a motherboard from 1998, and it wouldn't recognize all my ram(pc 100, and pc 133) during the startup memory test. i recently changed the motherboard and processor. now all of my ram shows on the memory test.

It's a fairly new system. It appears it recognizes the memory, shows that I have 640 megs. When using System Tools, it shows it as available memory. Specific applications use it and I have used up to 400 megs with certain applications. It's just that the System Resources appears to only use a max of 256m. I've checked this by just bringing a bunch of browser windows up until the System Resources was around 10% with the System Tools running showing available memory down to around 390 megs free. I've done other tests, using Java applications with the -XMx/-XMs options and have been able to bring the available memory down to around 240 megs free. So I it appears it's the System Resources that can't make use of this memory.

Did you look at 18829 about maximum RAM in ME? This too http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q253/9/12.ASP

Did you try disabling Virtual Memory before you ran the test?

Why would one want to do that? Chris is obviously confusing some of the numbers he is seeing. "It's just that the System Resources appears to only use a max of 256m." There are no stats that even attempt to relate System Resource to RAM.