Hello,
From your posting it seems that you might have the graphics card sharing the RAM of your laptop. Please see if you have a dedicated graphics card or the memory of your graphics card is set to share with your RAM. For a graphic card that is sharing the memory with RAM you can most probably still adjust it from the Bios of your laptop.
You need to look at the manual of your laptop which was supplied when you purchased it to see if it shares or to change the amount of RAM it will use.
Alternatively you can try Click and enter details of your laptop for more information. I would also recommend that you download and install all latest drivers/firmware from this site also.
The Dell Vostro 1015 laptop ships with only 2 GB RAM. If you didn’t upgrade the memory then you should only have 2 GB RAM. You can upgrade the memory of this model up to 4 GB max. If you say you have 3 GB RAM, then you need to check the memory modules installed at the bottom.
Your model has only two memory slots which allow you to fit in two 2 GB memory modules. If only 2 GB is visible to the system instead of 3 GB, check that both memory modules are connected properly to the memory slots. Also, even if you have 32-bit Microsoft Windows, you should still have 3 GB because 32-bit operating systems support up to 3.25 GB RAM.
Remove all memory modules then try testing one memory module on both memory slots to see if the amount detected by Windows is correct. Do this also on the other memory module. Windows should detect the correct amount on both memory modules. If one is incorrect or has the wrong amount, you need to replace it.
