In need of some help | windows 98 laptop | syndicate wars

elh_2009 · 4 Jun 2019 at 13:07

A couple of years back I had a urge to play some classic PC games from my youth, mostly championship manager 00-01. So I got myself a windows 98 laptop, it's a Pentium 4 with 1gb of ram.

I'm trying to install Syndicate wars and am getting a not enough memory error. I read that windows 98 struggles with 1gb or more of ram. I changed the vcache in system.ini to some settings I found online, it now let's me load the installer but instantly crashes

Any help please!

Armageus · 4 Jun 2019 at 13:10

For the sake of £1.19, to save your sanity - I'd buy a new copy of it from Good Old Games that is packaged to run on modern PCs
https://www.gog.com/game/syndicate_wars

elh_2009 · 4 Jun 2019 at 13:12

Yeah I should really look on GOG for most of my retro fix but the nostalgia isnt quite the same

m4cc45 · 5 Jun 2019 at 15:49

Windows 98 should be fine with more than 1GB memory so I'd buy some more memory if the laptop supports it.

M.

elh_2009 · 5 Jun 2019 at 21:20

Surley 1GB is enough? why is it crashing as soon as the installer launches?

LewisRaz · 5 Jun 2019 at 22:11

take 512mb of ram out.
98 has issues with over 512mb. Mine wont even boot with more than that.

mmj_uk · 11 Jun 2019 at 23:21

Yeah I read the same as LewisRaz and iirc that limit includes GPU memory, it's an addressing problem I think.

You have to remember that back in 2000/01 GPU's had 32-64MB and most systems probably had 128MB-256MB system RAM, by the time systems had 512MB+ people would have been on Windows 2000/XP so there probably wasn't a lot of need for Microsoft to patch Windows 98.

If you want to run old games on proper hardware then you're probably better off with period correct hardware.

elh_2009 · 12 Jun 2019 at 08:37

I tried taking 512mb out and it still crashed, probably as mmj_uk said above but for what i actually use it the laptop does the job, Syndicate Wars is the only game ive had issues with

sovietspybob · 20 Jun 2019 at 15:41

Yeah my retro '98 machine dosen't like running with more than 1 stick of 256mb SD ram, causes all weird issues when i go over 512 but i think that may be as much the motherboard as the software.