512 MB of RAM on Win98SE

[GraingerGuy]

Alright folks...I have 512 of SDRAM in my system and my comp is kinda unstable. Isn't there a registry hack that makes 98SE accept 512 MB of RAM?

Thanks!

[ribitch]

your system can accept 512 MB of RAM, but windows just cannot use it efficiently. Windows 9X wasnt designed to support the massive amounts of ram that are available today (remember win9x first started off when 12-16 MB was considered crazy amounts of ram)

Find out more information on your ram and try stressing it with some memory benchmarks. If the system lost stability after adding the ram, then I am led to believe your RAM could be bad or just too low of quality for your system.

I have ran win98 with 768 MB and had no problems at all. (besides the fact that I was using windows 98 :D )

[spigidygak]

Is it just one chip or separate chips? I have built a couple systems with 98se and 512 on one stick and they ran fine. Could be the ram.

[Ladogaboy]

Originally posted by spigidygak
Is it just one chip or separate chips? I have built a couple systems with 98se and 512 on one stick and they ran fine. Could be the ram.

Yeah, but that is only if the motherboard he is using supports that size of ram as well. Do you know how much ram your motherboard can actually support? And how much per slot?

[Tommy Boomfiger]

i dont remember 100% but when i had 98 dual booting on my box with a gig (256x4) i couldnt get it to load without tons of errors. so i took out 2 sticks and it would still give me problems. i used msconfig to limit the amout of ram to something between 500 and 511, rebooted and had no problems from there. kinda sucks because i want 98 on my box and i dont want to have to remove 2 sticks every time i boot it up

[Markel]

I have 512MB (2 256 sticks) and dual boot between Win98 First Edition and XP. I don't have any problems with 98. From what I remember, 512 is as much as 98 will use.

[smurphy]

I have 3 systems running 98 and 512 with no problems

1) ASUS CUSL2 with PIII 1GHz (this board is weak around the ram slots and I have seen it crack there)
2) ASUS P4T-E with P4A 1.8GHz
3) Shuttle SS51G (SIS648) with P4A 2.26GHz (soon to be XP)

Cheers,
Scott Murphy

[mcs328]

Do you need the memory to be the exact same thing if you have two sticks? I tried putting in a 256 from Crucial and another 256 from PNY and it could only read one. I didn't think it mattered.

[sbp]

Originally posted by mcs328
Do you need the memory to be the exact same thing if you have two sticks? I tried putting in a 256 from Crucial and another 256 from PNY and it could only read one. I didn't think it mattered. No, I've often run systems with mismatched memory. Having the same type of memory can cut down on problems.

Sometimes a mobo: won't like a certain stick of ram doesn't want all the memory slots on a mobo filled-it only wants a certain number filled wants certain slots filled first doesn't run well with a stick of specific sizes

[smurphy]

What speed of ram is it? I assume that both sticks are PC133 but you could run into problems if you have PC100 and PC133 in which case the PC100 should go in DIMM1 and DIMM2 gets the PC133.

Something else to check.

Cheers,
Scott Murphy

[Realrammstein]

if you haven't tried, yet, try different slots. if 1 stick, try using one of the other slots. if multiple sticks just try different configs of RAM placement. I thnk I've had to Abit boards, in my past, that had 1 bad RAM slot. And I would only discover the problem long after purchase (when I upgraded).

[Showtime]

Win98SE is working just fine with my oc'd 512 Corsair2700c2. Your mobo/ram is probably more likely to blame IMO.

Let us know if you get it working.

-jel:halo: