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Day-to-day running Win 9x/ME with more than 1 GiB RAM


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My Patch will support up to 4GB of RAM without other support.

Thank you for your answer, rloew, and thank you for your excellent work giving this opportunity to all us who know the real value of Windows 98!

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BTW I wonder why this thread is not placed as important so that it may be found easily by any visitor of this forum. I had difficulties to reach it because it was 5 pages behind the current one.

IMHO this is one of the most relevant things in this forum looking towards the future use of Windows 98.

Thanks seaweed!

This topic is not itself pinned but threre is a pinned pointer to it... If you go to Important / "Stickified" / Pinned Windows 98/98 SP1/98 SE/ME Topics, you'll find a pointer to it as the last item in section "Supported Software, Games + Hardware". And I've put a pointer to it on my own signature file also, to make it even easier to find. I know it's not perfect, but it's the best I was able to do, up to now.

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OS: Windows 98SE - RAM with HIMEMX

Memory 1 GB RAM (PC133 2x Kingston 512 MB)

Motherboard: Asus CUBX-E/L (Intel 82440BX)

CPU: Intel Pentium IIIE, 700 MHz (7 x 100)

Video card: nVidia GeForce FX 5200 (128 MB; AGP 2x)

config.sys: (for use with xRayeR)

devicehigh=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.EXE /NUMHANDLES=64 /METHOD:FAST /VERBOSE

(HIMEM.EXE is a renamed HIMEMX.EXE, for use with xRayeR's Safe Mode patch)

system.ini: ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

MaxPhysPage=488FFh

MaxFileCache=261120

Chunksize=4096

VCACHE.VxD: original 4.10.0.2222

VMM.VXD: original 4.10.0.2226

IO.SYS: patched with xRayeR's (Safe Mode)

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  • 4 weeks later...

I just finished writing a SDK to allow Programmers to use 64-Bit RAM in their programs. This will provide access to the last ~1GB of RAM on 4GB Systems.

On larger systems, such as my 8GB system (see list at start of thread), individual Programs are limited to 2GB, but collectively they could use 5GB.

A modified version could be used to access the 32-Bit RAM not used by people who use the MaxPhysPage workaround.

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  • 11 months later...

I've been experiencing (seemingly) a "memory leak" since running 1GB of RAM. Sometimes it occurs over time, other times it can happen within a few minutes. Has anyone else experienced this?

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Since you really have 1.25 GiB and use Win ME, try adding to your system.ini:

MaxPhysPage=50000 ; 1.25 GiB

Read this: Offler on MaxPhysPage

I'm suggesting you just put a directive limiting the available RAM to all you've got, which should be perfectly useless, but seems to be of help, both in what Offler reported and in my own experience, although I did not investigate it further at all, and both Offler and I observed this on 98SE.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Since you really have 1.25 GiB and use Win ME, try adding to your system.ini:

MaxPhysPage=50000 ; 1.25 GiB

Read this: Offler on MaxPhysPage

I'm suggesting you just put a directive limiting the available RAM to all you've got, which should be perfectly useless, but seems to be of help, both in what Offler reported and in my own experience, although I did not investigate it further at all, and both Offler and I observed this on 98SE.

I made the change but I don't see any improvement. It is still being slow in general & internet speeds are slower - 1/3 to 2/3's of what they should be. There could be other causes for that but it has just been since adding RAM. RAM is recognized but I swear it doesn't seem to be "being used". Idk of any way to check it's utilization or not.....

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Try Japheth's VWin32 Memory Status. But observe that increasing the RAM above 512 MiB should not increase the internet or overal speed noticeably. It'll widen your ability to handle large bmps and other graphics, and large data files in general. But it oughtn't harm your speed either... To establish it for sure, define or select some benchmarks of your choice, run them, then pluck out one of the RAM sticks and run them again. Compare the benchmarks results, if nothing changes, then it's not the RAM. Observe that you don't need to reconfigure the OS, since it'll work OK with less RAM, with the same settings used for more RAM. After you're conviced it's not the RAM, then put back the temporarily removed stick.

Note: Link's now fixed, thanks to Dave-H! :thumbup

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  • 2 months later...

I've been having no success getting my setup with with over 1GB of RAM, it works perfectly fine with 1GB and less, but once I add another 512MB I'll get "not enough memory" error on bootup. I have installed the VCACHE fix and set MaxPhysPage to 60000 (should be 1.5GB.... ???) if that matters, but so far I have had no success.

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OK, if you are using Xeno86's modded VCache.VxD, you should set MaxPhysPage to 40000, not 60000, and it should then work. You can have as much RAM as you want, but you cannot let Windows detect more than about 1152 MiB at most, unless you use RLoew's RAM Limitation Patch. Without it, MaxPhysPage=48000 is about the highest you can go, but you should start with 40000 or even 38000, and then set it a little higher by steps, until you get the "not enough memory" error again, and then lower it a little. Read again post #2, concentrating on users that don't use the RAM Limitation Patch and have Win 98SE. For Win ME, the maximum possible value is higher. Now, the remaining RAM that Win 98SE cannot use may be used for a ramdisk, using XMSDSK, so that all the RAM gets put to use. Good luck!

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  • 2 months later...

Mostly, yes. And it'll work for installation.

But, after installation is over, one can set those parameters differently:

MaxPhysPage=48000 (= 1152 MiB ) is about the highest one can go with Win 9x, while, for Win ME, the highest one can go up to is MaxPhysPage=7CB00 (= 1995 MiB ), but in either case one should increase the MaxPhysPage value by steps, until one gets the "not enough memory" error again, and then lower it a little...

And experience has shown that MaxFileCache=393216 (= 384MiB) is good enough for most users, there's no need to set it to 524288 (= 512MiB).

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  • 4 months later...
Guest wsxedcrfv

I'm just now getting around to seeing how much ram I can use running win-98se on the Asrock 4-coreDual VSTA board.

So with just 1 stick of DDR2 (1 gb) on the board and with these settings:

System.ini

[386Enh]

MaxPhysPage=40000

[vcache]

MinFileCache=2048

MaxFileCache=65536

Win98 starts up just fine and shows 1022 or 1023 mb ram under system properties. I note that windows sets the swap file to 1 gb, so I change the virtual memory setting to zero (none / disabled).

When I add a second 1gb stick, I can't get win98 to boot, so I replace himem with himemx in config.sys and I start playing around with MaxPhysPage and the himemx's /MAX= setting. The best I can do (max ram) available to windows is 1,213,202,432 bytes (according to Norton System Information) or 1157 mb (according to Windows system properties). This comes with /MAX = 1183800 and Maxphyspage = 48800 (approximately). I find that I can increase the /MAX to 1186176 and MaxPhysPage to 48B00 but it doesn't change the amount of RAM available to windows. If I go any higher with /MAX then Win98 doesn't boot.

Other than himemx and the fact that the system had DOS 7.1 on it before win98 was installed, the system is bone-stock original win-98. No windows update, no third-party tweaks or upgrade packs, no special or altered vcache.sys. No ramdrive being created.

If there's anything else I can do (that's freely available) that will get win98 to see more or this memory - let me know.

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