only half the installed ram is being used. How do I utilize both ram chips?

Solution
You can do this for that,

Download hwinfo32,
http://www.hwinfo.com/download32.html
open it,click run,close the top window which is the system summary,click save report at the left top,in the next window at the bottom check=dot "short text report" after that next,you'll get to see what is in your pc,copy that by clicking "copy to clipboard" and right click and paste in you next post.