I just lowered my total memory to 3 GB and only 2 MB is reserved for hardware now.  I also learned that the memory sticks were not configured in the best way possible.  I had a 2GB chip, a 1GB ship and (2) 512MB chips.  The dell manual says that you must install memory chips in exact pairs or use slots 1 and 3 for different amounts of memory (always the same speed).  It's possible that by removing the two 512 chips, the computer may run better.  I don't believe this has anything to do with the hardware reserved memory, but I thought it was worth mentioning.  Thanks for your help. To summarize, a 32 bit OS can only use "around" 3GB of memory (some versions of 32 bit Windows only use 2GB, depending on how it is configured).  If you install more memory than this, it might be used by hardware, but is not available to software.
Hello, I have a Dell Vostro 200 slim tower with 4GB of memory (4 sticks) and a 1 GB video card.  My OS is Windows 7 Ultimate, 32 bit.  I purchased the new video card because I noticed that 898MB of memory was being used for hardware (as indicated in the resource monitor).  After installing the video card, the hardware reserved memory is still 898MB.  I have done all that I can in the bios settings (the only thing I saw was a setting to adjust where to look first for video (which I selected PCI-e). I have updated my bios to the latest version, I think it is 1.0.16 now.   Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I sure would like to have those 898MB for Photoshop or something more useful. Thanks, -Sean
Hardware Reserved Memory still very high after installing video card