Added Memory...is it there?

[spasell]

I just added 2GB of memory, bringing my system up to 3GB. I had previously added an additional 1GB, but removed that stick, and replaced it with the 2GB.

I have a x61T running XP.

When I look under system information, it does in fact show the 3GB (actually says 2.97GB). However, when I run a defrag on my system, it says that there is only 89MB, with 62% of free space. That's where I was BEFORE I added the memory.

Can anyone clear this up for me? Perhaps I'm not looking at this correctly? I just think this is kind of strange that it's not reading the new memory added.

I did not really notice any increased speeds as well, as I had when I jumped from 1GB to 2GB that last time.

Any thoughts on this are appreciated. Thank you.

[ryengineer]

snip....When I look under system information, it does in fact show the 3GB (actually says 2.97GB). However, when I run a defrag on my system, it says that there is only 89MB, with 62% of free space. That's where I was BEFORE I added the memory....snip

The latter is HDD.

[Harryc]

Hard Drive defrag has nothing to do with memory. When you say only "89MB, with 62% of free space", do you mean "89GB, with 62% of free space" ? That is referring to space on your hard drive, not free or installed memory. You won't notice a difference going from 2 to 3GB RAM unless you run multiple apps simultaneously and they eat up your available memory. With 3GB (vs. 2GB) installed the machine can run more tasks, applications etc. before it utilizes the slower paging file on your hard drive. It's this constant paging file utilization that slows the machine down. Writing to a hard drive is much slower than writing to RAM.

[spasell]

Hard Drive defrag has nothing to do with memory. When you say only "89MB, with 62% of free space", do you mean "89GB, with 62% of free space" ? That is referring to space on your hard drive, not free or installed memory. You won't notice a difference going from 2 to 3GB RAM unless you run multiple apps simultaneously and they eat up your available memory. With 3GB (vs. 2GB) installed the machine can run more tasks, applications etc. before it utilizes the slower paging file on your hard drive. It's this constant paging file utilization that slows the machine down. Writing to a hard drive is much slower than writing to RAM.

Thank you for the help. That is what I THOUGHT was the answer but wanted to make sure...plus, meds:). Thanks again.