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Asked: 2021-12-15T04:18:17+00:00 In:

DOS 4GB RAM, 0 KB FREE…Huh?

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Got a real mystery here folks. Got a friend with a Dimension 8400. He has turned into into a dedicated DOS box for a project. He is running MS-DOS 7.10 on an 8 GB flash drive on the Dimension, booting as an HDD. The DOS machine has a 10 GB hard drive.

Basically, for some reason…without any programs running it hogs all the RAM. He is trying to install a Soundblaster Card but he cannot because there is no memory Free. How do we get DOS to stop hogging all the memory? What is going on here?

I’ve included an image for your review.

http://imgur.com/a/YeOXV

 

“The world is a vampire and I am the throat upon which it feeds…” – S.T. Gill

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    1. Best Answer
      DOS can handle 640 MB of RAM.
      Some drivers can be loaded in the so called upper memory.
      That is the memory part between 640 MB and 1G.

      The thing is, you have to load drivers into the upper memory.

      This can be done as follows:

      Content of the config.sys file:

      DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS
REM if needed, you can load EMM386.EXE here, by remove the REM infront of the DEVICE=EMM386... line
REM but EMM386.EXE itself needs memory to run
REM DEVICE=EMM386.EXE noems

REM change driver_name1 and 2 with the names of the drivers, you need to load
DEVICEHIGH=driver_name1.sys
DEVICEHIGH=driver_name2.sys

      Content of autoexec.bat file:

      LH driver_name3.exe
LH driver_name4.exe

      Where LH stands for LOADHIGH.

      So whenever it’s possible to load drivers into upper memory, it will be done by LH in autoexec.bat or by using DEVICEHIGH in config.sys.

      Content of msdos.sys, if you’re using MSDOS version 6.22 or 7.x and msdos.sys is not a binary file.

      [OPTIONS]
logo=0
SystemReg=0
Bootmulti=0
DisableLog=1
LoadTop=1

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