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Piezo

Windows 98 has Alzheimer's

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I suppose most of you that have dealt with this OS in this respect, as bad as it is though isn't an abomination like Windows 95. Those of you who have probably know about the memory problems with Windows 98 once you have a large quantity of RAM installed.
My problem is that I need to use Windows 98 and I have 1.25GB of RAM in my computer but I don't care for 98 to see any more than 256 or 384MB of it since I wouldn't need any more memory for it for what I'm doing. In order to make it work with a large quantity of RAM you have to jerry-rig it to make it work but now I keep having system hangs in that OS.
My question is why the hell doesn't the "limit the amount of usable memory to . . ." function actually work? I set it to 256MB and disabled my MinFileCache and MaxFileCache vcache settings and the OS just plain died. If that function actually did what it was supposed to then I shouldn't have any problem. So what is it that makes 98 know that you're lying to it? Is there a work-around for it besides physically removing RAM whenever booting into 98? Any help would be greatly appreciated because I need this to work but the most I currently seem to be able to get out of it is stability followed by a system hang after about 20 minutes with my "best found settings."

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Explain again why it's not allowed to use all of your RAM. Are you... saving it for later?

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Bucket said:

Explain again why it's not allowed to use all of your RAM. Are you... saving it for later?

Those of you who have [dealt with it] probably know about the memory problems with Windows 98 once you have a large quantity of RAM installed.

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Yes, if you have more than 512MB of RAM installed, it causes problems. If you have more than . . . I think more than 768MB of RAM then the OS will crash so hard at boot the computer restarts. In order to keep that from happening you have to create vcache entries, and whatever entries are the best ones for your system are anyone's guess. I used to have it relatively stable with my 2.0GHz CPU, but once I installed my 2.8GHz CPU the old settings just won't cut it.
Anyway thanks for your help AndrewB, I'll definitely look into that.

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AndrewB said:

...

But if you limit the MaxFileCache in the WIN.INI file, the problem doesn't exist. The "problem" is that you deleted this setting, so I don't know what you're trying to accomplish.

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It's in system.ini, not win.ini. Originally there are no vcache entries, you have to make them yourself and you have to keep adjusting them to make Windows 98 as stable as possible and in my experience I can't seem to get it any better than it is right now. I'm tired of screwing with it and if Virtual PC can truly convince 98 that there's only so much RAM installed then I'll just use that. By the way, Virtual PC is a built-in function, right?

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Piezo said:

I'm tired of screwing with it and if Virtual PC can truly convince 98 that there's only so much RAM installed then I'll just use that. By the way, Virtual PC is a built-in function, right?

Heh no, he is basically implying you use an emulator, like vmware, virtual pc, qemu or whatever else is out there.

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Virtual PC isn't good for DOS games, if that's what you want Windows 98 for (it'll lag like a DOS emulator.)

See this article for the MaxPhysPage setting, that you also need in addition to MaxFileCache setting if you have over a GB of RAM.

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I had this problem in ME. over 1 gig of ram it started questioning my existence on this planet. thank god I don't use that shit anymore.

then again, what 9x box needs more than 512 MB anyway?

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Myk, that's actually the article that I read before I installed 98 again recently. Using the RAM limit will work on its own, but it is not nearly as stable as having the vcache entries with it. In the article he instructs that you edit the MaxPhysPage manually when you can also do it from msconfig. The problem is that you'd better know your hex if you want to tweak it manually since that's the value it's stored at. Another problem is that the entries that he suggests aren't a one size fits all deal since it doesn't provide enough stability for the operating system. I've read that 384MB of RAM is basically ideal for 98 and if I can wholly convince Windows 98 that's all the RAM I have then I'd rather just leave it at that and not have to worry about any more instability.
Yes Bloodshedder, this is my primary computer that can boot from the slave as well as the master. I like this function so much I won't buy another motherboard without it. It saves me a lot of trouble without having to bother with all of that partitioning bull crap.

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That function isn't that uncommon. Lots of recent motherboards support pressing a hotkey before bootup that lets you choose the device to boot from.

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Well I just checked out Virtual PC and it's not gonna work since it will only work on XP and I have to use 98. I need a way to trick 98 into believing that you've got less RAM, that's all. I wish that wasn't too much to ask. :-/

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Piezo said:
In the article he instructs that you edit the MaxPhysPage manually when you can also do it from msconfig. The problem is that you'd better know your hex if you want to tweak it manually since that's the value it's stored at.

Can't you just remove some RAM and boot up to make the changes, or just make them from a Windows XP boot-up?

Another problem is that the entries that he suggests aren't a one size fits all deal since it doesn't provide enough stability for the operating system. I've read that 384MB of RAM is basically ideal for 98 and if I can wholly convince Windows 98 that's all the RAM I have then I'd rather just leave it at that and not have to worry about any more instability.

Then use the appropriate MS knowledge base article to choose the RAM limit you want.

Naturally you're going to use vcache limits anyway (in addition to the memory access limit.) I have 256 MB here, and vcache limits of 32 MB (min) and 64 MB (max) for stability/smoothness.

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first, install the win 98 service pack, and see if it "just works"

http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html


otherwise

1. in autoexec (i think) create a ramdisk for (TOTAL RAM minus 512)mb using a dos based ramdisk app

2. in win98, set the swap file to use the ramdisk (which it thinks is a fixed HD) for it's virtual ram

so long as the ramdisk is always loaded on boot win98 won't know that it's swap file is also actually ram too :-)

here's a "new and improved" ramdrive.sys (allows a ram drive of up to 2gb)
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/xmsdsk.zip

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Well I installed the Windows 98SE SP2 thing and it seemed to fix things. I'm not sure what all it involved with the memory repair, but these entries in System.ini were changed:

[386Enh]
;Rem TShoot:
MaxPhysPage=40000 {Memory limit: 1GB of RAM}

[vcache]

;Rem TShoot:
MinFileCache=0
;Rem TShoot:
MaxFileCache=393216 {vcache limit: 384MB of RAM}

but I'm not sure if anything else was changed to better the memory management.
To tell you the truth, Cycloid, I wasn't really sure how to do what you suggested with the ramdisk but hopefully I would have figured it out on my own.

Edit: okay, apparently that didn't work very well. It made it more stable, but not fully stable enough from eventually going haywire. I'm going to try out the RAM disk idea since I don't have too many more options.

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I apologize for the m-m-monster bump, but I finally sat down and fired up the RAM disk.
I've found that if I limit the RAM that Windows 98 can use artificially, using the msconfig RAM limit or using a RAM disk, it makes Windows less functional and less stable. The more RAM I give it (with the vcache entries of course) the more functional and stable it becomes.
So I'm thinking if I allow Windows 98 to see all of the RAM (1.25GB) instead of just 999MB, 98 might actually be functional and stable enough to use. I'll just have to figure out how to do it first. >_>

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The settings you had given it on the earlier post were pretty ugly. Did you try setting max physical memory to 384? And the vcache should be like 25% the physical memory. But who knows, maybe it goes crazy with the newer memory chips.

Anyway, it won't work right with more than 1 GB.

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myk said:

The settings you had given it on the earlier post were pretty ugly. Did you try setting max physical memory to 384? And the vcache should be like 25% the physical memory. But who knows, maybe it goes crazy with the newer memory chips.

I tried that, I tried 256MB, I tried 512MB, I tried 768MB all with a vcache setting around 25-33% of the total allowed memory. The results were pretty linear. At 256MB the video was stuck in 16 colors, my custom theme wasn't loaded, no sound, etc. At 768MB I got most of the stuff working but it still didn't stack up to the functionality at 999MB.

Anyway, it won't work right with more than 1 GB.

I know someone who claims to have 1.5GB of RAM in his computer with Windows 98. I'll try to ask him how he made that work if he really did.

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yeah i've only heard about it working, for it to work correctly the ramdisk needs to run before windows starts. i.e. before anything else in autoexec.bat so win from the get-go thinks it only has (for example) 512mb. i.e. dont "artificially" limit windows' ram through system.ini etc. let it use all the *available* ram. you still need virtual memory but if you leave it as the default "let windows do it for me on drive C:" first.

i have a fixed size swap file (on a standard hd) and have done for years with no problems, it's set to 512mb and my physical ram is also 512mb.

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Here's the autoexec.bat entries that I have:

Rem TShoot:
LH C:\xmsdsk\xmsdsk 262144 F: /t /y
Rem TShoot:
MD F:\TEMP
Set tvdumpflags=8

As far as I know that's right. The problem may be related to other hardware such as the chipset (SiS 648) or the CPU since it seemed to be more stable with a 2.0AGHz Pentium 4, and now it's got a 2.8GHz.

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