Memory Limitation

[skyline]

I got 1gb of ram installed, but because I'm running ME I can only use 512mb of it! ~~ Is there any way allow me to use my 1gb of ram fully?

Peace

[Jeffbx]

Install W2K

[topane]

What Jeffbx said, also make sure your mobo supports all that memory

[giambona]

Win2k and WinXP can support up to 4GB of RAM

[clutchy]

ME is ghey, hehe, nm, yeah so try w2k or you know try xp i'm running it right now, and it's pretty cool, i like w2k better though.

[MusashiM]

Win Me only supports 512 megs of ram?...

Not that it is that important to me since I will probably never have more than that in a system, but it is still good to know. Also, is there a way of changing so you can use more ram?

[skyline]

One thing that kept me away from XP is due to software and driver compability. (also would most of the drivers 4 win2k also work 4 XP? because some manufactures are slow in develop new drivers..~~)

Here config of my computer
Abit KG7-RAID
Asus V8200 Deluxe
Creative Sound Blaster Live!
Pinnacle PCTVpro


By far I'm still waiting for the proper softwares and drivers for xp before I do another fresh install. ~~ And, just something happen lately about those warms or virus are mainly concentrate on PCs running win2k. (just another excuse for me not running win2k that's all hehee)

So, I would really appreciate any temp. solution for ME!

Peace

[skyline]

And also of course I heard many good thigns about win2k and xp. One that attract me the most is its stability unlike my crash friendly ME ~~ (although after my carefull installation of drivers and softwares it doesn't crash as often now)

So, give me stregnth to upgrade to XP!!


Peace

[Jeffbx]

Sorry man - those are the shakes. 98/ME will simply NOT support memory above 512. It's a limitation of the OS.

Here's the tech details if you're interested. The best you can do is modify the system.ini so ME will only address 512MB of your RAM.

http://support.microsoft.com/support...SRCH&SPR=WINME

[TommyBoomfiger]

Originally posted by Jeffbx
Sorry man - those are the shakes. 98/ME will simply NOT support memory above 512. It's a limitation of the OS.

umm, i have been running win98se for a while now with 768mb of ram with very few memory problems. once in a while i get a memory leak, but this is not a regular occurance. strangly windows is reporting that i only have 765mb, but that is probably a calculation glitch. when i try to run it with a gig of ram, i do run into a multitude of problems, but none with 768. maybe im just lucky. as far as winme goes, i never had memory problems, but it did run much slower than 98se. maybe that was the ram, maybe it was the os.
just my .02.

[sbp]

Win98/Me get it out of here.

[MusashiM]

Yeah, I'm with you Tommy...

I have atleast one friend that was running Windows 98 with 768 megs of ram and no problems. I think it might just be the motherboard, cuz I remember reading so different mobo manuals, and they say that they won't support more than 128 megs per slot. And as for Windows ME, I am really curious because everyone talks about how bad it is, but my system has never been more stable since I started running ME. Of course, that might be because almost everything is brand name, and over 1-2 years old, but still. Never a glitch, never... hmmmmm

[sbp]

I recommend people use Win2000. There is no need for people to put up with the unstable windos kernel.

[TommyBoomfiger]

yeah, the mobo does make a big difference in how much ram your system can handle. some just cant support differnt types of ram. so you do have to make sure about this.
i agree with sbp, and i am going to make the switch to win2k, but i will keep 98se for games and a few other favorite programs which wont work in 2k such as a lot of ea games.

[jkusar]

Okay, is the limitation only on physical ram? I have 512 MB in my machine but due to a memory leak in Adobe Premiere, I have had my used memory (physical and virtual) up to as high as 1.2 GB. This is under Win98se. Now that I'm using XP, I don't have that problem, but I am curious that 98 could get that high without crashing. It ran very slow with a lot of HD thrashing, but it didn't crash.

[Jeffbx]

Dang it all, I wish you people wouldn't prove me wrong in public!

Upon closer inspection, the vcache is limited to *800*MB, not 512. According to MS:

Vcache is limited internally to a maximum cache size of 800 MB.

This problem may occur more readily with Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) video adapters because the AGP aperture is also mapped to addresses in the system arena. For example, if Vcache is using a maximum cache size of 800 MB and an AGP video adapter has a 128-MB aperture mapped, there is very little address space remaining for the other system code and data that must occupy this range of virtual addresses.

So, you apparently can run 98/ME with more than 512MB without experiencing a problem. In specific instances (such as noted above) you may have a problem which can be corrected by lowering the amount of physical RAM or setting the vcache artificially low.

Motherboard support is a different issue. I'm assuming here that the motherboard will support whatever RAM configuration we're discusing. If the mobo doesn't support it and you can actually get it to boot, you WILL have problems regardless of what the OS will support.

[skyline]

After reading some of the articles from MS knowledge base, I modified my system.ini's MaxPhysPage then disabled the limit in the msconfig of 512mb. then my WinME boot with 1024mb of ram under system property smoothly so far.

Can someboy explain what MaxPhysPage, Vcache, and MaxFileCache are about? (what do they do?) I'm confused




Peace

[Jeffbx]

MaxPhysPage:

Default: Determined by Windows based on the highest
physical page number detected by the Memory
Manager during initialization.
Purpose: Specifies the maximum physical page number that
the Memory Manager can manage as a useable page.
This setting allows pages to be added at a
physical address beyond what the Memory Manager
recognized during initialization. If the value
specified is less than what the Memory Manager
determines, the Memory Manager will ignore several
physical pages that it would normally use,
preventing the use of memory. This is useful if
you are using a hardware device that cannot
recognize all of the physical memory in your
computer (for example, ISA DMA Network cards
cannot access physical memory above 16 megabytes.)


Vcache:


The Windows 32-bit protected-mode cache driver (Vcache) determines the maximum cache size based on the amount of RAM that is present when Windows starts. Vcache then reserves enough memory addresses to permit it to access a cache of the maximum size so that it can increase the cache to that size if needed. These addresses are allocated in a range of virtual addresses from 0xC0000000 through 0xFFFFFFFF (3 to 4 gigabytes) known as the system arena.


MaxFileCache lets you specify a maximum value for the Vcache.

[skyline]

Thanx for the input Jeffbx


Peace