More than 1 GiB in Win9x safe mode?

[Usher]

Some time ago Tihiy hacked Win3x SVGA drivers for Win9x safe mode use (see thread). The main job with Win9x was to add settings to SYSTEM.CB file used in safe mode instead of normal SYSTEM.INI.

Anyone want to hack SYSTEM.CB to use with > 1GiB RAM? Just merge with your SYSTEM.CB settings quoted below:

[386Enh]
EMMExclude=C000-CFFF
MaxPhysPage=20000

[vcache]
MinFileCache=2048
MaxFileCache=65536

Some settings added to SYSTEM.CB seem to be ignored and I have no Win9x computer working with > 1 GiB RAM, so I don't know if the change will work. You must try the hack by yourself - reboot your system to safe mode and see if it works.

[Usher]

MaxPhysPage setting works for sure. Just tested limiting 512 MiB to 256 MiB in safe mode.

[Usher]

The hack should be tested without patches for safe mode:

- without vcache.vxd patched by Xeno86;

- without HIMEMX.EXE and IO.SYS patched by xrayer.

If it works, you can test other values for MaxPhysPage and MaxFileCache.

[dencorso]

The method you propose is interesting and ought to be thoroughly tested.

It has the attractive of being much simpler than the solutions in use nowadays.

Here is a reference I think might be of interest for those intending to use it Understanding Safe Mode.

I have now added this thread to the list of relevant threads in the 1st post of the Win 9x/ME with > 1 GiB thread.

[Offler]

I use safe mode with more that 1GiB only with normally booted autoexec.bat and config.sys, while the dos ramdisk driver is active and consuming unusable memory. No need to hack, althought it does not solve the main problem.

Another way i to use patch which is hanging there for some time.

[dencorso]

IT WORKS!!!!

used the usher's method, or dencorso's guidelines till step 6

I can now enter safe mode with 2GB installed and the system is very stable, I burned a few cds, flashed the firmware of my SCSI burner, no memory problem whatsoever

This is just to add a cross-reference to the thread where Usher's method was shown to work.