Can't enable virtual memory

[98 Guy]

For some background, see my recent post about installing win-98 on a 500 gb hard drive.

There seems to be a problem with enabling virtual memory.

From the System Properties, Performance tab, I am told that virtual memory is not enabled. When I bring up the virtual memory dialog box, the radio-button "let windows manage my virtual memory settings" is selected, and the following information is shown in grey:

Hard Disk: c:\ -14440 MB Free

Minumum: 0

Maximum: no maximum

When I select the radio button "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings" those settings change to this:

Hard Disk: c:\-14440 MB Free

Minimum: 0

Maximum: 51096

I changed the maximum to 512 (I assume that's mega-bytes) and restarted. Virtual memory was still showing as being disabled. I set both the min and max to be 512 and restarted again. It still said that virtual memory was disabled, but this time the Hard Disk value had changed to -13928 MB Free (a difference of 512). I changed both to 128 and still virtual memory was still disabled.

Prior to each change, I looked for win386.swp in the root directory, but it was never there (even when I tried to unhide it using attrib).

So something wierd is going on with the swap file and virtual memory. Might have to resort to messing with registry or .ini settings to see if I can get it going. Any known issues with Win-98 showing a negative number for hard drive space or otherwise for refusing to enable the swap file?

[oscardog]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272620 perhaps

[submix8c]

Correct as oscardog's link states (q272620). Good call.

Go here for the 98SE Hotfix -

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=84886

q272621 - Hotfix for bug in Reported Size in Virtual Memory Tab

In list, link points to the same place; why a different "Q" I dunno. Clears that up; THX, oscardog!

Go here to Fully Patch 98SE

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=80800

Go here for a list of additional interesting projects (but you knew that) -

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=91

BTW, WIN386.SWP is in WINDOWS directory.

Edited July 25, 2007 by submix8c

[Ponch]

BTW, WIN386.SWP is in WINDOWS directory.

Until you set it manually, then it's moved to the root.

[98 Guy]

As reported here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272620

-----------------------

When you view the Virtual Memory tab in System properties, the hard disk free size is reported as a negative number if your hard disk has more than 32 gigabytes (GB) of free space.

WORKAROUND

You can ignore the incorrectly listed free space because Windows internally interprets the numbers correctly as large positive numbers.

The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

09/12/2000 02:31p 4.10.2224 384,144 Sysdm.cpl Windows 98 Second Edition

To resolve this problem, contact Microsoft Product Support Services to obtain the hotfix.

--------------------------

I obtained the updated file from the win-98 service-pack thing (unpacked it manually) and replaced my existing sysdm.cpl. While it did correct the display of a negative free size on the hard drive, it did not solve the virtual memory issue.

I then connected another SATA drive to the system (160 gb, with a single 25 gb FAT-32 partition, formatted with 4 kb clusters, a little over 6 million clusters) and Win-98 DID enable virtual memory when instructed to put the swap file on the new drive.

So for some reason win-98 did not want to locate the swap file on the 500 gb drive. Either it did not like the fact that the drive was formatted with 4kb cluster size (resulting in 121 million clusters) or it didn't like where on the drive it would have to put it (at the back 10% of the drive).

Also -

I increased the amount of installed memory to 1 gb, and still got "insufficient memory" when running Windows Scandisk and Defrag on the 500 gb drive.

DOS scandisk does not give an error, but it would have taken 4 days to run (given it was at the 30% point after 30 hours).

[submix8c]

BTW, WIN386.SWP is in WINDOWS directory.

Until you set it manually, then it's moved to the root.

??? Never seen that before; OEM, Upgrade, or Clean (any version)! Always in Windows directory unless manually moved. Only one I know that puts it in Root is Win3.x...

@98 Guy -

You defined a 25GB Partition, therefore Windows was able to "deal" with it. If you go back to the first link I provided, there is also an "unofficial fix for GT 132GB HDD", so tryng it on a 500GB HDD wouldn't work unless it had first partition defined small enough (did you try that?). Check out the complete list of HotFixes.

Also there is a WorkAround for GT 512MB RAM (the limit for Win98). Browse around in the forum for it. There are relatively recent posts providing it. Will definitely get errors otherwise. BTW Real Memory (the "sticks) is not Virtual Memory (the SWP file). Here is a quote -

The workaround is to:

Open System.ini with Notepad and then look for the following entry:

[vcache]

Add the following entry under "[vcache]":

MaxFileCache=524288

Then save and reboot Windows.

HTH

Edited July 26, 2007 by submix8c

[98 Guy]

> You defined a 25GB Partition, therefore Windows was able to "deal" with it.

> If you go back to the first link I provided, there is also an "unofficial fix for

> GT 132GB HDD", so tryng it on a 500GB HDD wouldn't work unless it had

> first partition defined small enough (did you try that?).

The 500 gb drive is a SATA drive that is being controlled by the on-board VIA raid controller. Win-98 is NOT using ESDI_506.PDR to talk to the drive. If it was, I would have pooched the drive during my file-copy test where I filled the drive with >500 copies of the win-98 CD.

> Also there is a WorkAround for GT 512MB RAM (the limit for Win98).

I was able to have 1 gb of installed ram (and win says 1022 mb available ram).

> MaxFileCache=524288

I think I made my entry something like 128 mb, not 512 (why go so high?)

Here's an update:

So you know that my C:\ drive is a 500 gb SATA drive, formatted with 4kb clusters (resulting in 121 million clusters). I filled most of the drive with over 500 copies of the win-98 CD (copy rate was about 11.5 megabytes per second). It took about 10 hours. Anyways, the drive still has about 50 gb free. Win-98 did not want to create a swap-file on it (I noticed that AFTER I filled the drive). So I assume that it didn't like the 4kb cluster size (more specifically, the fact that the drive had so many of them).

So when I slaved another drive to the system (a drive with only 6 million clusters) windows was OK with it (but I had to manually tell it to put the swap file on d:).

Ok, so now I remove the slave drive and substitute another 500 gb drive (this time, formatted with 32kb clusters - about 15 million of them). Win-98 was ok with that drive too for holding the swap file.

Conclusion:

1) Microsoft had us believe that Win-98 wouldn't function properly on a drive where the cluster-count goes through the roof, hence they had the cluster size increase as the drive gets bigger. This results in 4.17 million clusters on a 128 gb volume. Many people bad-mouth FAT-32 because the clusters get so large - they think it has to. Truth is that MS does that just to limit the number of clusters to about 4 million.

2) I took a 500 gb drive and formatted it with 4kb cluster size. This resulted in 121 million clusters. I then installed win-98se on it, applied all relavent motherboard, video and network drivers, updated IE to 6.0 and then went to windowsupdates and downloaded all the updates and patches. I replaced scandskw.exe, dskmaint.dll and defrag.exe with the win-me equivalents. Ok, so they don't work on this drive (insufficient memory - even with 1 gb of installed ram).

3) I repeatedly copied the win-98 CD over 500 times just to fill the drive (resulting in over 3 million files and 200,000 directories on the drive). No catastrophe happened when I crossed the 137 gb point on the drive.

So, would I ever prepare a 500 gb drive as a single volume and install 98 on it? No, not for regular use. This was a special test, just to see if win-98 and FAT-32 could cope with that situation, and it basically did. However, when I do create several volumes for real use, I will make sure the win-98 volume does have 4kb cluster size to make for efficient use of the space. Other volumes for stuff like audio or video or other large files I may increase the cluster size, but probably not beyond 16 kb.

[submix8c]

Apparently so... Here is a quote from (another reliable source) -

Fat32 -

The error message reads:

- Your computer does not have enough free memory to defrag the drive. Quit one or more programs.

or

- ScanDisk could not continue because your computer does not have enough available memory.

This error is actually caused because the new hard drive has been formatted using a cluster size that is too small. In order for Scandisk and Defrag to operate on a FAT32 drive it must have a cluster size as per the following table.

Up to 8 gb 4K clusters

8 to 16 gb 8K clusters

16 to 32 gb 16K clusters

32 to 64 gb 32K clusters

The actual limitations have to do with the physical size of the file allocation table (FAT). Scandisk and Defrag both require that the total size of the FAT does not exceed 16 mb. As each cluster on the drive requires a 32 bit (= 4 byte) entry in the FAT and as there are always two full copies of the FAT this means that the drive cannot contain more than 2.1 million clusters. 2.1 million clusters times 4 bytes per cluster times 2 copies equals 16 megabytes.

Fat16 -

Drives and partitions under 528 mb will have an 8K cluster size, from 528 mb to 1 gb the clusters will be 16K, and over 1 gb up to the 2.1 gb limit the clusters will be 32K.

Just a little digging around... and DOH! esdi_506.pdr - NOT used for SATA (key part is ESDI - dumb me!).

[cov3rt]

i just wanted to bump this thread because im having / had similar issues in the past with virtual memory not working right on windows 98 and have not found a working solution yet. it seems that after a certain point of updating the system, i will notice in system properties that it mentions that "performance can be improved by enabling virtual memory", i then see that dxdiag indicates 0 MB used and programs and applications either freeze or give blue screens. i have applied that patch indicated in this post and like the op mentioned, it did fix the size of the hard drive in the virtual memory settings menu but it did not fix the issue with the virtual memory working. \

 

i noticed this issue upon reboot after changing the display adapter driver to the scitech snap graphics driver for the intel 910gml graphics since there is no gma 900 driver for windows 98. i had problems in the past with vbemp9x so i tried to use the scitech solution but it seems that its no better, dxdiag shows it using 15 MB of video memory, mycomputer and mydocuments folder seem to be blanked out for the fonts for some reason and sometimes on some windows, some of fonts are missing for the folders. other than that, it does seem more stable however i don't know if the scitech driver has anything to do with the virtual memory problem. 

 

is there a possible patch from rloew or someone else that can fix this issue? it would seem that limiting the hard drive to just under 32 GB would fix the issue but i'd rather do that with windows 95 which brings up another thing. why is that windows 95 does not indicate using any of the swap file through dxdiag? it always says 0 MB used or 0 MB available, no matter how many things i had open or even using a test 200 MB setting of virtual memory did not change anything. could there also be a patch for this too? i always limited the hard drive to 31 GB or lower on windows 95 with 384 MB of ram limited as well and so far, i experienced little to no freezing or errors when opening programs and working. but it would be a whole lot better if i could use perhaps 115 GB in both windows 95 and 98 without virtual memory problems, it seems that 116 GB and higher causes issues, i think this is what rleow mentioned in his site that contains various patches. 

 

the specs of the laptop im working on is the hp dv4000, specific model hp dv4217cl, it has 1 GB ram, limited to 512 MB right now, although i had it working perfectly fine with 1 GB ram limited to maxphyspage=40000 before the virtual memory issue, the hard drive is 74.5 GB, i can provide other specs if needed.