just noticed this



any ideas why half of my ram would be "reserved"??

No matter how hard i run the machine, its never in use.....

 

Caching, extended memory usage.
What graphics card setup do you have. Onboard, dedicated, etc

 

Do you have 8GB of RAM?
On the assumption you don't (apologies if you have) -
In XP task manager it shows the overall page-file usage, which incorporates the RAM and an amount of hard drive space, used for temporary storage. I assume resource monitor is a Windows 7 move towards Apple's activity monitor, but still shows the same thing. The first 4 'reserved' GB will probably be a mostly HD based portion used for low demand system functions.
I remember in Vista, it actually showed you your real RAM usage. I have never used 7 so I'm unsure what is shown in task manager (or the 7 equivalent).

 

im 99% certain that 4gig of ram has not been reserved deliberately. After the hassle i went through installing windows 7 on this machine (had to reflash bios for it to even initialise the instal) I wouldnt be surprised if its a bios settings issue, but have no idea regarding specifics.....