Another attempt to solve the Doom Builder texture list scrolling crash (win9x only)

I've been looking into memory management of older Windows versions (9x and ME) and my suspections are now confirmed; The crash which occurs to some of you that are on Windows 9x or ME is due to the system being low on GDI memory.

Unless otherwise configured, Doom Builder caches the textures and flats when it loaded them once so it doesnt need to load them again every time it needs to show it to you. This cache is simple a copy of the texture/flat image in memory as a Bitmap.

Windows reserves memory for 2 different purposes from your entire RAM. This memory, meant for interfaces and graphics, is limited for the older Windows versions (3.11, 9x and ME). Newer Windows versions (NT, 2000, XP) do not have these limitations. More details HERE

I recommand those that have this problem to go into Configuration (uhmm, F5 i guess?) and uncheck "Cache resources in memory". Test it and post your experience here. Other people not having this problem stay out of this thread ktnxbubye.

Ah excellent. I had a feeling it might be some Windows ME memory issue. It may or may not be a related problem, but if I run DB for a long time I also get problems with memory. To the state where I need to restart my computer to get memory resources back. Maybe this will help that too.

Anyway, I haven't had much free time to do much editing recently. But I just did a quick test of scrolling through the textures as fast as I could and, whilst it loaded a bit slower than before obviously, it didn't ever crash. Hopefully I'll have some more spare time to give it some better testing soo, and I'll post here if I have any problems.

Yes its right if it is somewhat slower than with caching, because it has to load the patches data and assemble the texture every time it needs to show it. Thats why I made it cache textures, to gain speed at the cost of a memory hog.

Ok Gher...... CodeImp I booted win98se, fired up DB, hit the F5 jobby, unchecked Cache resources in memory and loaded my map and resource wad..... I can't seem to get it to crash. Have scrolled up and down through my 600 textures several times now with no crashes. before it would crash with just a couple passes. Ok I'm going back to win2k now ;)