Too much RAM for MSDOS prompt?

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Matteo April 28, 2001 at 10:48:39 Pacific

Hi, I have a PC K7/1.333 with 765 MB ram.
It works fine, but when I try to open a DOS prompt (or when I try to run any .exe MS-DOS application) I fail with a message of
"not enough memory". I tried with/without EMS, but I could not fix the problem.

I heard that DOS under Win98 cannot access more than 512 MB ram: is that true? Is there any workaround?

Thanks,

--Matteo--


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#1
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April 28, 2001 at 11:49:11 Pacific

This is to do with the 640Kb of conventional memory that windows still relys on and nothing to do with your installed RAM.

Go Start/Run and type in mem /c /p

In the DOS window which pops up see what the largest executable programe size is. Mine currently shows 584Kb. If yours is much less than this see what's loading up in memory and edit your autoexec.bat and/or config.sys files to get rid of stuff you don't need.

In actual fact for most purposes neither of these files is required at all so you could rename them both and see what happens.


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#2
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April 28, 2001 at 12:34:28 Pacific

When you have more than 512MB of memory installed, you will get Out Of Memory errors caused by VCache growing too large

Do Start > Run > System.ini
Scroll to the [vcache] section and add
MaxFileCache=512000
Save and reboot


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#3
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Smee April 28, 2001 at 13:32:32 Pacific

765 MB RAM !!

Why oh Why oh Why ???


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#4
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April 28, 2001 at 16:37:16 Pacific

WOW! And I thought I was going overboard with 320mb of ram. I always wanted to know "how much is too much?" Guess now we all know. Anything over 512mb is too much, and this post is proof of that. Now I also know how much more I can install. Thanks for this valuable information.
Come See My WebSpace

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#5
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April 28, 2001 at 17:16:27 Pacific

Ah, why do you say that?
You can install up to 2GB under win98. You just have to limit vcache at 512 otherwise it takes over all the virtual memory addresses and gives you out of memory errors.
I don't really think there would be anything wrong with a 2GB box with a vcache that could only get as big as 512MB!!

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