FYI - IF you run into an issue where Windows shows only half your memory available.

I upgraded to 32 GB of memory on my 2nd computer, and ran into an issue where the BIOS said it was all there, BUT that only 16 GB was available for use.
 
Windows too said 32 GB was installed, but that a little less than half was available.  Looking at detail in the Windows Resource Monitor, it showed that approximately 17 GB was flagged as Hardware Reserved, and this was the missing memory.
 
I looked at a bunch of different potential solutions, including contacting the motherboard technical support, but got nowhere, until I ran across one guy's suggestion that ended up fixing the issue for me.
 
To make a long story short, I went into REGEDIT, then into:
 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SYSTEM>CurrentControlSet>Control>Session Manager>Memory Management
 
Once there, I reviewed the ClearPageFileAtShutdown parameter's value, which was set to the Windows default value of binary zero.  That default tells Windows to leave the PageFile contents as they are, when the computer is shutting down.  FYI - sensitive data can remain in the PageFile contents and can be read by someone with access to the computer.
 
I altered the value of ClearPageFileAtShutdown to binary '1' and then backed out and shut down the computer, rather than just doing a restart.  Apparently, just doing a restart, even with that parameter set to '1', doesn't clear out that file - has to be a shut down.
 
Anyways, upon restart, sure enough, the missing memory was once again available to Windows, so that I had the entire 32 GB of memory (minus normal Windows overhead).
 
IF anyone else runs into issues where about half your memory is showing up as unavailable, and flagged in Resource Monitor as Hardware Reserved, you might think about backing up the Registry and looking into performing the above.
 
I certainly cannot guarantee it will work, but it certainly took care of it for me.....
 
Bob Bone
 

Sounds reasonable - I have the latest BIOS.  So far so good with the change I noted above.
 
Bob Bone
 

UPDATE: I did more digging, and discovered that while the registry change I noted above to clear out the pagefile on shutdown is still something I wish to do, it did NOT always guarantee proper allocation of hardware reserved memory in Windows.
 
So, I ended up making the following change, and this time it seems to repeatedly leave me with all but a couple GB of memory available to applications on start up:
 
1. Launch MSCONFIG
2. Click on Boot tab
3. Click on Advanced
4. Remove the check labelled: Maximum Memory
5. Click OK and if needed then click Apply and exit MSCONFIG
6. Restart computer
7. Launch RESMON (Windows Resource Monitor)
8. Make sure Hardware Reserved value reported is something sane, like 1-2 GB at most.  (I have 32 GB memory)
9. Win a Grammy for your songs written with your super powerful and super fast Sonar. (consider punching Kanye if he interferes with your acceptance speech).
 
EDITED to add link to Microsoft article describing all but the Kanye/Grammy parts:
 
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/978610
 
Bob Bone
 

Hey Bob ,
 
I'm still in the single digits stage of RAM on my Win computers .
Some day I hope to make it into the double digits stage when it comes to installed Ram .
 
Thank you for sharing this type of thing ,
 
Kenny