We are having problems with a compaq presario losing ram. We put in a 256 and it lost 100 ram. What would make that happen?

We put 256 of ram in our compaq presario and it seems to lose 100 of that 256 what would cause this to happen?

You should check the processes running, do this key combination ctrl+Alt+delete and choose "open task manager" and go to the processes tab, look for the process with the biggest number next to it, that could be the reason why

You can't "lose" RAM, it's a physical thing. So what are you using to read the amount of RAM? And how old is this computer?

Sounds like a speed mismatch.
RAM of different speeds will report incorrectly.