Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
Hi,
Every time I boot up windows 98se i get an "out of memory" error if i try to do anything (even open My Computer... if i click on the Start button, the menu is blank). this has only started happening recently. i've found that if i stop and restart explorer.exe, then everything works fine. any idea what might be causing explorer.exe to act strangely?
no, it's a very old machine - a laptop with just 32mb ram. it doesn't run 98 brilliantly anyway, but this has puzzled me, especially as the problem goes away if i restart explorer.exe.
0 
That error is actually common when too much RAM is installed. 32MB is kinda pathetic though. How much HDD space is left? With that amount of RAM your system must be constantly using virtual memory.
0
yes, i read the MS bulletin on having too much ram. i think 32mb ram is perfectly reasonable to run windows 98, and it was running pretty well until this problem started, and works fine once explorer is restarted. i don't think it's anything to do with the actual amount of ram or even the amount of swap space - i think it's a problem with the startup process. oh well, the simple windows solution of a reformat and reinstall, i guess...
0
"i think 32mb ram is perfectly reasonable to run windows 98"
Sure, as long as you don't install an antivirus program or run anything else that uses memory.
0
yep, as the machine is not online, no need for any hideous modern massive antivirus software which struggles even with 1gb of ram. why even try? all it runs is office 97, which flies along.
there WAS a time (around 1998, funnily enough) when machines with 32mb of ram were perfectly acceptable entry level machines.
0
Run MSCONFIG, check SELECTIVE STARTUP and uncheck 'process config.sys file' and 'process autoexec.bat file'. APPLY, OK and reboot. See if that makes any difference. If not, you can run msconfig again and re-enable those files.
0
interesting. i did that (i actually went through the diagnostic startup and said no to autoexec.bat and config.sys). i noticed that the bootup stopped for a long time when loading the msmouse driver - i don't know if that's relevant.
then when i finally got onto the desktop, it had lost my display settings but i did not get any memory problems, and was able to get working straight away.
so what does that mean? is there something i can fix or will i have to reset my screen resolution every time? actually, no, that won't work, as win98 requires a restart every time i change resolution, so that won't get me anywhere!
0
You might want to post back contents of config.sys and autoexec.bat. Easiest way is probably to run SYSEDIT and copy and paste them to your next posting.
Your display can be messed up if system.ini doesn't load. If you answered NO to that in selective startup then that's probably the reason.
0
You said you don't get online with it? It doese sound like a maleware problem I have had before. How long is the PC booted up before it happens?
Jesus Loves You!
Keyboard not detected. Hit F1 to Continue. BREAKFAST.SYS HALTED Cerial port not Responding!!
0
If you haven't already, while you're in MSCONFIG, uncheck Office Startup, Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar, and Microsoft Find Fast. Also check for same in the Start>Programs>Startup folder.
Skip
0
I started out using 32mb with Windows 98se and it is NEVER enough for a stable system. I currently only have 128mb but I insist on having a 500 meg swap file and only with that last item do I have a stable machine that I can open 14 IE windows at one time and not have problems with that.
At 32mb I couldn't open a large jpg file without crashing.
I missed the part where you answered the question about how much free hard drive space you had. I'll go on to ask, who is managing your virtual memory and what are the settings there?
Lee
0
If I remember correctly it takes 47MB of RAM to fully load Win98 without using the swap file. 32MB isn't enough.
Win98 does run nicely with 128MB, if that is possible to configure.
0  |
 |
 |
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
