I am helping someone with their computer. They have a pentium 3 Gateway computer; given to them. Their computer has 2 128mb chips installed. When you boot up the computer it initially says they have 32mb RAM. When I have it display booting messages it does say 256mb RAM. Their system icon states they have 128mb RAM. Why the differences? Now we are having issues uppgrading to XP; posted under software >> XP.

It could be 32mb of video RAM, and 256mb of normal RAM.

try running cpu-z. (google for it)