hi folks,

i haven't been here in a while, but i'm back with a problem. :-)

i have a dual boot system with Win98SE and Win2000 Pro.

today i added a tick of RAM (so my PC now has two 512 MB sticks of DDR2100 RAM) and now Win98SE will not startup. however, Win2000 Pro starts up fine.

can any provide assistance on how i can get Win98SE going again (without taking out the new RAM stick)?

all assistance is appreciated!

- Larry

You need to limit the size of your VCACHE in order for Win98 to work.

Enter the lines below in the [VCACHE] section of SYSTEM.INI

minfilecache=131072
maxfilecache=131072


HTH

duffy90210,

thanks for the quick reply, m8!

i'm running Win2000 Pro right now (as i mentioned before), and when i go to START > RUN > and type system.ini, there is no [VCACHE] section... here is a copy & paste of the entire system.ini file:
---------------------------------------------------------
; for 16-bit app support

[drivers]
wave=mmdrv.dll
timer=timer.drv

[mci]
[driver32]
[386enh]
woafont=dosapp.FON
EGA80WOA.FON=EGA80WOA.FON
EGA40WOA.FON=EGA40WOA.FON
CGA80WOA.FON=CGA80WOA.FON
CGA40WOA.FON=CGA40WOA.FON
[network]
Bios=1304449690
---------------------------------------------------------

any further suggestions???

hi again duffy90210,

i booted up in Win98SE in Safe Mode, and the VCACHE section was in the Win98SE system.ini file!

so, i typed in your suggested settings and all is back to working like a treat.

thanks, m8!

btw, quick question, how much RAM is the new VCACHE setting limiting Win98 to using? also, is this limiting the amount of RAM that Win2000 Pro has access to?

thanks again.

Win 98 can access only 512 MB RAM.

The changes you have made under Windows 98 is purely for Windows 98, when you boot to Windows 2000, it will address all avaiable memory reported by the BIOS.

HTH

thanks again duffy90210 and also thanks to Ageamiu.

also, Ageamiu - not trying to argue here, but Windows 98SE can handle 640 MB of RAM... at least, that's what i was using under Win98SE (until i just got the new 512 MB stick to replace the 128 MB stick). i don't know if i was 'lucky' or what, but i had no errors or problems using 640 MB of DDR2100 RAM under Win98SE for over a year - and i did not have any adjustments to the system.ini file or BIOS to make Win98SE handle it. it just worked and all i had done was plug in the RAM.

thanks again to you both.

- Larry

512 MB RAM isn't a border, but on some systems Win 98 (SE) doesn't manage correct a memory over that and system doesn't stop or stuff but has some problems, is more slow or has other problems. If your old system worked perfectly was that exception confirming the rule. An interesting thing: Cacheman (a software which I recommend if you don't use) has a setting, here is the text: ”Limit available RAM to 512 MBytes
This setting limits total available RAM to 512 MBytes. Windows 95,98 and ME does officially support 512 MBytes at all, with more installed RAM it can become very unstable. If you are using multiple operating systems on your computer and have due to this usage more than 512 MBytes installed it is recommended to check this setting. Windows 95,98 or ME gets no real advantages of more than 512 MBytes anyway.”

Hmm...so that would mean that if you had a gig of RAM, Win98 would only address 512megs of it?

Yeah. This is the reality.

That's what I thought. I don' use Win98, but if I ever dual-boot WinXP and Win98 (I'll probably have to install Win98..having an urge to play old games), now I know why it only reads 512megs of RAM.