Need help with my new Sony SZ!

Hello sony experts! I just picked up a used Sony SZ360 off ebay. Overall, its fabulous, however, I'd like to make some adjustments to acheive maximum performance. The comp has 2 GB of RAM installed however when I look at the system it says only 1.5 GB of RAM is available. Is this because of the Recovery partition? Is there anything I can do to make use of more of the RAM?

Also, this machine comes with windows XP. I would like to reload Windows XP without all the bloatware. I searched all the threads on this forum and have only gotten more confused at the process I should use! I have the Windows XP Pro disc with serial number. I do not have a disc with the drivers, but I know there are avail on the Sony support site. Can someone please provide a little guidance or point me to a thread with the instructions I should be using...I know there here somewhere, I just don't know where!! Thank you in advance!!

 

Are you sure it has 2GB installed? Try going to the BIOS by pressing the F2 key when the VAIO logo appears after turning on the notebook and it should show how much memory is installed.

You can refer to this guide for your clean XP installation. Since your SZ360 is a Napa SZ, make sure you install the correct VAIO Power Management and VAIO Event Service utilities and update the BIOS to R0112N0.

 

The recovery partition has nothing to do with the RAM installed on your system. The recovery partition is a part of your hard disk, not your RAM.


That RAM is probably taken up by the integrated video chipset!

Or else it means it only has 1.5 GB of RAM. it could go no where else

 

I would use CPU-Z to check the RAM. The SPD page gives full details of each RAM module and the sum of the two capacities should agree with what is on the Memory page. This is a better indicator of the actual RAM on board than Windows, which may show the available RAM after some has been allocated to hardware.

John