Memory issue

Tarmac Terror · 22 Mar 2009 at 09:54

Hi folks, a bit of help needed here please..

One of my PC's runs a Chaintech 7JNS Ultra Zenith board, AMD XP3200+ CPU and was running 512Mb of DDR400 RAM.
I bought 2GB (2 x 1GB) Crucial PC3200 (DDR 400) CL3 184 pins CT12864Z40B.16FDY matched pair sticks and thought nothing of going and swapping my old RAM out....Here the fun starts.
Taking electrostatic precautions I swapped the RAM over and then proceeded to switch it on. BIOS showed the increased memory capacity and then Windows 98, which I'm running on that machine, splash screen comes up. All good I thought. Then, I get a black screen with a message that there is not enough memory to support windows and that I should delete some files in CONFIG and another folder.
As my board has 3 DIMM slots I tried different combinations of slots and even tried one at a time. Oddly, using 1 stick (and it doesnt matter which one!) Windows will boot up in safe mode but as soon as I try to reboot in 'normal' mode its not having any of it. Had a look at the crucial website before I bid on these and they ARE compatible with my board.
I was thinking they might be dead but the seller appeared kosher, the DIMM's were packaged up by someone who clearly knew what they were doing, BIOS recognises full amount of memory and lastly, surely to have BOTH sticks DOA is a bit of a tall order.

Any ideas???

Scott

Corasik · 22 Mar 2009 at 10:33

Its a but in Windows 98/ME (probably 95 too). Basically the more ram you have the more Vcache it allows, and the bug basically means as ram passes 512, it starts spiraling out of control, and eventually so much ram is assigned to vcache the system just breaks down and runs out of memory.

To warn Windows that you have more than 512MB of memory installed, add
the following line to the [VCache] section of your system.ini file:
MaxFileCache = 524288."

You should be able to find and edit win.ini in Safe mode, if not you'll have to go back to 512Mb and edit in normal mode.

miniyazz · 22 Mar 2009 at 11:12

2GB RAM in Win98? almost worth setting up a RAMdisk lol!

Tarmac Terror · 22 Mar 2009 at 12:10

Corasik said:
Its a but in Windows 98/ME (probably 95 too). Basically the more ram you have the more Vcache it allows, and the bug basically means as ram passes 512, it starts spiraling out of control, and eventually so much ram is assigned to vcache the system just breaks down and runs out of memory.

To warn Windows that you have more than 512MB of memory installed, add
the following line to the [VCache] section of your system.ini file:
MaxFileCache = 524288."

You should be able to find and edit win.ini in Safe mode, if not you'll have to go back to 512Mb and edit in normal mode.

Thanks for that.
Just tried it but still comes up with the error message.

Do you think a swap to Win XP might solve the problem or do you think its hardware related??

Scott

Tarmac Terror · 23 Mar 2009 at 12:45

Have now sorted this...

A switch to XP has cured the issue. Strange though how the VCache fix didnt work. Had been on Microsoft KB and it seemed to state that the VCache fix would cure it. How odd!!!

Scott

Corasik · 24 Mar 2009 at 00:28

Odd, I got the info from the Microsoft KB too. Still XP's better and doesnt have the same issue, well not unless you upgrade to 4gb+ without going 64bit