98 SE stutters

[azagahl]

My Win 98 SE system stutters for seconds at a time. By stuttering, I mean the mouse cursor becomes immobile (sometimes invisible, it seems) and any keys I type won't have an effect until a few seconds later when whatever I typed will suddenly appear.

It seems to stutter whenever I do these things:

-Establish a dial-up connection

-Attach a USB hard drive

-Write a large file - it seems to buffer up to 500 MB of writes instantaneously and then thereafter it will lock up for 10 seconds while it actually does the writing.

Is there anyway to get rid of these annoying pauses?

It's really bad when I'm doing a lot of hard disk-intensive processing because it makes typing or working basically impossible.

Hmm I just realized now maybe shrinking the file cache in windows\system.ini *might* help (so there will be a lot of little pauses instead of big huge pauses) but it won't help with things like usb drives or dial-up connections

Any ideas?

[soldier1st]

tweaking the system.ini would be a good thing,also use 98lite to remove stuff,also is the computer ol or new?if it's old then thats probably it,only install apps your gonna use

-Establish a dial-up connection=give it time,does it freze before and after making a connection?

-Attach a USB hard drive=give it time,win 98 se takes time for usb hard drives,also what size is the hard drive?also what usb is it using?usb 1.1 is slow,usb 2.0 is faster,make sure your using the latest usb drivers

-Write a large file - it seems to buffer up to 500 MB of writes instantaneously and then thereafter it will lock up for 10 seconds while it actually does the writing.=how much memory do you have?also what are your system specs?my windows 98 se does that and it's on a fast computer and i got it fast,i think because windows 98 is built on top of dos,that may be a reason for it

[prathapml]

Looks like an Insufficient RAM issue.

See if too many tasks are running at once.

[azagahl]

>is the computer ol or new?

New. The CPU is Athlon 64 3400+ 2.4 GHz.

>Looks like an Insufficient RAM issue.

Doubtful. I have 1 GB RAM and the swap file is by itself on a 1 GB primary FAT32 partition at the top of my drive. The swap file is set to vary from 256 MB - 1 GB.

BTW, I have a max file cache of 512 MB, I think this is why it gladly buffers 500 or so MB of copying and then starts horribly stuttering (more like freezing). I'm using Ultra ATA 100 (DMA mode 5?) for both of my harddrives, can it not flush the cache in the background?

>Establish a dial-up connection=give it time,does it freze before and after making a connection?

It freezes once just as it finishes connecting and the dial-up window minimizes. Everything works on my system, there are just nasty pauses.

I noticed from using Boot Log Examiner that a lot of hardware-related detection items take 0.56 seconds each, I have no idea what it is doing but it's suspicious and maybe it's related to the stutters when attaching usb harddrives or connecting to the internet.

I think the 500 MB caching and then stuttering problem is unrelated because the pauses are so much worse.

[prathapml]

Just try a re-format of C: and install it again! That'd eliminate OS-related causes.

I hope you don't keep any data on your C: partition - just the OS/apps alone.

[soldier1st]

i agree

maybe it's the modem thats causing the pauses

did you update to the newest drivers?

also why are you using windows 98 se on that new of a system,with those specs 2000 or xp would be far better

2000 and xp like more and more ram,windows 98 se at first can't use more than 512

Add This To Your System.ini under 386Enh

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1,it will make windows use the ram before using the virtual memory

32BitDiskAccess=ON

PageBuffers=32

also add this to your config.sys file

FILES=65

BUFFERS=40

STACKS=64,512

tweak your modem settings too

enable write behind caching for removable drives

use 98lite to remove useless apps

enable dma on your devices like hard drive,cdrom/etc...

install dial up networking 1.4

your file caching is probably set too high=lower it to say 4096

use an antispyware app like giant antispyware or ad aware to remove spyware

go here http://www.mdgx.com/ and apply what you need

[oftentired]

This seems reliable information and is specific to the 512 mb of RAM issue at hand in fact possibly presenting a solution to the problem described. Quoted from: http://onlinehelp.bc.ca/tips.htm#64mb

1.  There can be false "out of memory" errors produced, and also other problems, on Windows 95/98/Me systems with more than 512 mb of RAM installed.  The underlying cause of this problem is a shortage of address space in the "system arena" portion of the 4 gb total memory address space available on the x86 type 32 processors.  Windows splits this total addressable space into 3 sections, and one of these is the "system arena" where a number of functions including disk cache and the AGP video aperture have their address assignments mapped.   If more than 512 mb of RAM is mapped for use as disk cache then there may not be enough unused address space available for other functions that are also mapped to the "system arena" addresses.   The solution is quite simple.   All that needs to be done is to limit the size of the disk cache by adding a MaxFileCache value to the [vcache]section of system.ini.  The value entered should be approximately 70% of the total installed RAM in kilobytes, with an absolute maximum of 512000.  Thus for a system with 384 mb of RAM the entry would read

MaxFileCache=275000

and for systems with 700 mb or more it would be

MaxFileCache=512000

[soldier1st]

what about for systems that have 512?would would the setting be?cuzz i usualy transfer half a gig worth of files every 2 hours

[oftentired]

When I was running Win9x systems I learned a lot about the Max Cache settings from axcel website.

http://www.mdgx.com/newtip16.htm (scroll down to Max Cache Speed)

An easy way to manipulate these settings plus some that are not changed by the REG file suggestion on the axcel website is to do so programatically with the Analog X Cache Booster. It has a very nice and friendly GUI.

http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/system/cb.htm

The best way to determine the settings that will optimize your system is to experiment with them.

[soldier1st]

well the super cache is best used if you've got 128MB or more but 256 is actualy better