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Puzzling Registry Size Issue


Dave-H

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Glad you got things working again!

:yes:

I'm sure you'd like to get your amount of RAM back up again though.

I'm running Windows 98 with 4GB of RAM, although I haven't got Office installed!

If you haven't already, trawl through these threads to see if there are any tweaks you can try to get the system to still work with your 2GB of RAM now you have got Office installed.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...118097&st=0

http://www.msfn.org/board/Help-I-need-to-G....html&st=0

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...memory&st=0

Do make sure that your registry is backed up before trying anything though!

There should be a backup created automatically every time that Windows boots successfully.

To make sure that's working type "scanreg /restore" from DOS, and make sure that you have the necessary backups.

Your system.dat size is still small compared with mine.............

:)

Edited by Dave-H
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Before I started installing stuff, I got up to 1159MB of RAM visible to Windows, but I dont need that much anyway since I only surf on the internet, use ICQ, Office and watch TV. :hello: The "real limit" in W9x OSes are system resources and they cannot be raised, so I dont care about the amount of free RAM, since 765MB is more than enough for my purpose ... ;)

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  • 1 month later...

Well, finally my problem is cured!!

:thumbup :thumbup :thumbup

The answer has finally come from Rudolph Loew, the creator of the Windows 98/SE/ME RAM Limitation Patch.

I had been using version 5.1 of his patch for some time, to allow my system to function with 4GB of RAM installed.

With it Windows 98 sees 3327MB, pretty near the same as Windows 2000, and the limit for a 32 bit OS.

Rudolph has just released the next version, 6.0, which includes some interesting options for optimising the use of low physical memory.

I quote from his manual -

"Some Devices, especially many Gigabit Ethernet Controllers, require space in

Low Physical RAM. Low Physical RAM is also used by Windows 98 or 98SE for

Memory Tables. If there is not enough Free Low Physical Memory, Windows will

crash during Bootup. Reboot, a Blank Screen, or a VFAT Error are the most

common symptoms."

Well, that describes my problem completely!

It even explains why disabling my network card allowed the system to boot, something I never understood.

Why it's taken so long to discover this is a mystery to me, as I did an enormous amount of research on possible causes of the problem.

Anyway, using Rudolph's new patch, with the necessary switch which moves the VXD data above 16MB, and adding his additional low memory splitter program to autoexec.bat, the problem has completely gone away!

I restored all the data to my registry which I had stripped out and backed up as being superfluous to get the size of the system.dat file down, and the system still booted, with a file of over 14MB!

That would have been impossible before.

So thanks indeed Rudolph!

I hope you are subscribed to this thread and read this.

Anyone else suffering similar problems, you now know where to find a fix -

http://rloew1.no-ip.com

It's not free, but IMO it's worth $20 of anybody's money, as it does exactly what it says on the tin, and more!

After all this time I am well pleased.

:)

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My Registry never got so big that it caused a problem.

Like the Ethernet Driver, the Registry is also placed in Low RAM limiting available DMA space.

It would explain why I noticed that the maximum RAM I could use decreased after every update I did to my machine. With everything loaded I could not run even with 1GB of RAM.

I didn't think the SPLIT8MB.EXE Program was needed after I added the "Move VXD" Option to my RAM Limitation Patch but with a 14MB Registry you probably need it as well.

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Rudolph has just released the next version, 6.0, which includes some interesting options for optimising the use of low physical memory.

Well, that describes my problem completely!

It even explains why disabling my network card allowed the system to boot, something I never understood.

Why it's taken so long to discover this is a mystery to me, as I did an enormous amount of research on possible causes of the problem.

Hi,

I had the same problem with onboard RTL8111A gbit ethernet. I was trying it wit R.L.'s patch 4.0 but it caused BSOD. I revealed that when I disable

eth. in control panel and reenable it after boot I can use 2GB RAM with the patch. Now with new version it works fine with network enabled.

But currently I use win98 only sometimes and all memory consuming jobs like photo editing I do under XP and 1,1GB is enough for my w98 setup

so I will not go to pay for the patch...

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My Registry never got so big that it caused a problem.

Like the Ethernet Driver, the Registry is also placed in Low RAM limiting available DMA space.

It would explain why I noticed that the maximum RAM I could use decreased after every update I did to my machine. With everything loaded I could not run even with 1GB of RAM.

I didn't think the SPLIT8MB.EXE Program was needed after I added the "Move VXD" Option to my RAM Limitation Patch but with a 14MB Registry you probably need it as well.

Thanks Rudolph.

Glad you are across this thread!

:yes:

I have tried removing the line to load SPLIT8MB.EXE from my autoexec.bat, and the system still boots fine.

Do you think I should leave it disabled or keep it loading anyway just to be on the safe side?

I assume that there is no disadvantage in loading it.

As I said, my registry system.dat file is now 14MB, and that's after removing a lot of registry space hogging programs (Real Player is one of the worst!) to get its size down.

I had got it down to just over 12MB, which seemed safe, but with your patch it seems like I now don't have to worry any more!

:thumbup

The problem originally came to light when I installed Office XP on the machine.

That also writes huge amounts of registry data.

Whether I could now get away with reinstalling it I don't know.

With your patch probably yes, but I hate to think how big system.dat would then become!

As I use it on Windows 2000 quite happily, I think I'll leave it like that.

I don't really need to have it on Windows 98 as well.

I'm just happy that at last I'm free of having to obsessively prune and compact my Windows 98 registry all the time to make sure it doesn't get too big again and stop the system booting!

I'm very grateful for that.

:)

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Dunno what kind of machines you guys have, but my Soyo Pentium III reads SYSTEM.DAT: 16,470,048 bytes and USER.DAT: 2,621,472 bytes and have no such problems.

Granted, it only has 256MB RAM and no Gigabit Ethernet adapter (just a regular 10/100MB one).

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I have tried removing the line to load SPLIT8MB.EXE from my autoexec.bat, and the system still boots fine.

Do you think I should leave it disabled or keep it loading anyway just to be on the safe side?

I assume that there is no disadvantage in loading it.

I wrote SPLIT8MB first, then reworked my Patch. Either works alone on my Computer. I included SPLIT8MB in case the Patch wasn't sufficient.

If it is not needed, you can disable SPLIT8MB as it will use up a small amount of RAM.

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Dunno what kind of machines you guys have, but my Soyo Pentium III reads SYSTEM.DAT: 16,470,048 bytes and USER.DAT: 2,621,472 bytes and have no such problems.

Granted, it only has 256MB RAM and no Gigabit Ethernet adapter (just a regular 10/100MB one).

I think only part of the Registry is actually loaded during Boot, so the amount of RAM and the use of Gigabit Ethernet seem to be be much more important.

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I wrote SPLIT8MB first, then reworked my Patch. Either works alone on my Computer. I included SPLIT8MB in case the Patch wasn't sufficient.

If it is not needed, you can disable SPLIT8MB as it will use up a small amount of RAM.

Thanks Rudolph.

I'll probably leave the SPLIT8MB file on the system and just REM out the line in autoexec.bat rather than remove it.

Then I can easily re-enable it if any problems do appear.

You do say that new programs can sometimes over-write your patched files and cause problems to come back, and that will be "belt and braces" should that ever happen!

Cheers, Dave.

:)

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I wrote SPLIT8MB first, then reworked my Patch. Either works alone on my Computer. I included SPLIT8MB in case the Patch wasn't sufficient.

If it is not needed, you can disable SPLIT8MB as it will use up a small amount of RAM.

Thanks Rudolph.

I'll probably leave the SPLIT8MB file on the system and just REM out the line in autoexec.bat rather than remove it.

Then I can easily re-enable it if any problems do appear.

You do say that new programs can sometimes over-write your patched files and cause problems to come back, and that will be "belt and braces" should that ever happen!

Cheers, Dave.

:)

Fortunately, unlike my High Capacity Disk Patch, if the Patch is overwritten, your Computer will not boot but no damage will occur. You can reinstall the Patch from

DOS.

In an earlier post, you mentioned getting a blank screen when your Registry was within a certain range.

I observed similar behavior. There is a narrow range where VFAT initializes properly but the boot does not complete.

On occasion I have seen crashes on the VXDs that follow such as VPICD. This has been reported by others in other forums.

I suspect that VFAT crashes are the most common symptom because it probably is the first to reserve DMA buffers.

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@RLoew: I understand the new capability added to v. 6.0 of the RAM Limitation Patch enables VMM to load at physical addresses above 16 MiB, with the result that the whole VxD arena will start at higher physical addresses, thus freeing the necessary low memory. I also understand that SPLIT8MB has a different, complementary approach to this. Can you explain a little more what does SPLIP8MB do? I did not yet update from v. 5.0 of the RAM Limitation Patch, but I guess I should, since my system.dat is already at 10 MiB and growing...

@RLoew and Dave-H: BTW, I believe I must update all your entries at my List to reflect your upgrade to v. 6.0 of the RAM Limitation Patch, am I correct? I'm striving to keep the List as up-to-date as possible.

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Huh,

I wonder how big registers you have guys. Mine are:

USER.DAT 1765408 25.02.09 23.10 read-only hidden

SYSTEM.DAT 5644320 25.02.09 23.10 read-only hidden

and I have installed hundreds of programs but not the latest MS Office (keeping office 97 + open office)

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@RLoew: I understand the new capability added to v. 6.0 of the RAM Limitation Patch enables VMM to load at physical addresses above 16 MiB, with the result that the whole VxD arena will start at higher physical addresses, thus freeing the necessary low memory. I also understand that SPLIT8MB has a different, complementary approach to this. Can you explain a little more what does SPLIP8MB do? I did not yet update from v. 5.0 of the RAM Limitation Patch, but I guess I should, since my system.dat is already at 10 MiB and growing...

@RLoew and Dave-H: BTW, I believe I must update all your entries at my List to reflect your upgrade to v. 6.0 of the RAM Limitation Patch, am I correct? I'm striving to keep the List as up-to-date as possible.

SPLIT8MB fragments available Low RAM so that Windows will not put large blocks of data in Low RAM during Real Mode Boot.

The /M option on the Windows 98/SE/ME RAM Limitation Patch was intended to replace SPLIT8MB but it appears that some people need SPLIT8MB.

Version 6.0 of my RAM Limitation Patch makes the same Patches as Version 5.1 for Windows 98SE when not using the /M option.

My other machines have not been updated except for my older GigaByte K8NNXP (RLoew #2) which needed the /M option when I reenabled the RTL8110 Ethernet.

Edited by rloew
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I see my system details have been updated in the list, thanks dencorso.

:thumbup

The one thing that still gets me about all this is that MS have always maintained that there is no size limit on the registry in Windows 98 (as I believe there was in Windows 95.)

From my experience, and others, in certain circumstances this is just not true, because of the 16MB memory limitation on start-up, which unbelievably still seems to apply on Windows 2000 as well!

If you have the time, read through the later posts on my "Faster Startup For Windows 2000" thread, the other thing I've been trying to resolve, and still haven't!

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...18009&st=80

If you can write a patch to fix that for me Rudolph, I really will be impressed!

:)

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