Win95/98 misreports RAM

If your ram is in several sticks try rearranging the order on the motherboard. Sometimes you can get simms that have different speeds and windows will have trouble reading the memory in the higher slots.

At the start up window,boot into the CMOS Paneland check to see if the ram is being recognized by the system.
Up date your bios and see if that wil correct the problem.

Reported Memory Does Not Match Amount of Installed Memory.See Microsoft Knowlidgebase
Article ID: Q146912 for more info regaring this common issue.
JG

From your question it would appear that you have a 16MB memory module and a 32MB module. (or a pair of 8MB and a pair of 16 MB, if SIMMS)

Definitely place the larger memory in the "first" memory slot(s) and you can even try booting the machine with just that memory in place. It is possible that your system doesn't recognise it or that it is looking for "first memory bank size or smaller" memory as goes.

But first, try starting up with just the 32MB that's not being counted.

Try replacing the file HIMEM.SYS in the windows directory with the one from the install cd. Windows loads this automatically and I have seen an install replace this. HIMEM manages your memory and older version would only recognize a maximum of 16M. This causes Windows to report on 15 or 16M RAM while the POST reports the true physical memory amount.