Hello All,
You are entitled to your opinion be it right or wrong, as am I. It can be tweaked/modified to run over 512MB’s of RAM.
If it was designed to run that amount of RAM – we would not need to be tweaking it after installing it – and that is so it recognises the RAM – it does not say it will use it.
I base my information on work, experience and research.
Due to windows 9x memory handling problems etc etc anything over 256MB’s is not very useful.
http://www.iamnotageek.com/showthread.php?t=4364 "Basically, Windows95 (and even 98 and ME) do work with more than 128MB, but they don’t actually benefit much from more RAM because they had very bad memory management that allowed memory leakage.
No matter how much RAM than 128MB you had, that memory leakage would happen and mess Windows up after running many applications for a while. With Windows95 memory addressing, some segments would remain locked even though programs that were using them actually finished.
That’s why with Win95/98/ME, after working for a while (a day or two), you would always need to reboot to fully get back free memory".
http://zurich.csail.mit.edu/hypermail/thinkpad/2003-01/0104. html "With even larger amounts of RAM (approaching 1GB), you may experience system instability even with the above setting change. Basically, Windows 9x/Me were never designed to handle this amount of RAM – see this knowledge base article,
http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q304943 and this one
http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q311871 .. If you want or need this much RAM, you should really be using Windows 2000 or XP, which do not have such problems with large amounts of RAM".
As stated by microsoft below
"Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM Installed The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition
Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition
Microsoft Windows 98
Microsoft Windows 95
This article was previously published under Q253912
If this article does not describe your hardware-related issue, please see the following Microsoft Web site to view more articles about hardware:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/windows/topics/hardware /hwddresctr.asp SYMPTOMS
If a computer that is running any of the versions of Windows that are listed above contains more than 512 megabytes (for example, 768 megabytes) of physical memory (RAM), you may experience one or more of the following symptoms: You may be unable to open an MS-DOS session (or command prompt) while Windows is running. Attempts to do so may generate the following error message:
There is not enough memory available to run this program. Quit one or more programs, and then try again.
The computer may stop responding (hang) while Windows is starting, or halt and display the following error message:
Insufficient memory to initialize windows. Quit one or more memory-resident programs or remove unnecessary utilities from your Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files, and restart your computer.
CAUSE
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.
On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache size can be large enough that Vcache consumes all of the addresses in the system arena, leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions such as opening an MS-DOS prompt (creating a new virtual machine). WORKAROUND
To work around this problem, use one of the following methods: Use the MaxFileCache setting in the System.ini file to reduce the maximum amount of memory that Vcache uses to 512 megabytes (524,288 KB) or less. For additional information about how to use the MaxFileCache setting, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 108079 32-Bit File Access Maximum Cache Size
Use the System Configuration utility to limit the amount of memory that Windows uses to 512 megabytes (MB) or less.For additional information about how to use the System Configuration utility, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 181966 System Configuration Utility Advanced Troubleshooting Settings
Reduce the amount of memory that is installed in your computer to 512 MB or less.
STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.
MORE INFORMATION
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.
Use these commands
32-Bit File Access Maximum Cache Size
The information in this article applies to:Microsoft Windows for Workgroups Microsoft Windows 95
This article was previously published under Q108079
SUMMARY
When you use Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with 32-bit file access, the maximum amount of memory that can be set in the 386 Enhanced dialog box in Control Panel is 24 megabytes (MB)(or 24,576 kilobytes [K]). Microsoft Windows 95 does not provide a user interface to change the 32-bit file access cache size.
MORE INFORMATION
Although the user interface is limited to 24 MB, the theoretical maximum size of the cache is actually 2GB. This cache size is using physical RAM; therefore, the cache size is limited to the amount of RAM on your computer. Setting the cache size greater than the physical amount of RAM available results in the following error message when re-entering the Virtual Memory settings in the 386 Enhanced dialog box:
32-bit file access was unable to run. Your hard disk(s) may not be compatible with 32-bit file access.
Steps to Manually Increase or Decrease the Cache Size for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Windows 95
Open the System.ini file in a text editor, such as Microsoft Windows Notepad.
Go to the [VCache] section.
Change the MinFileCache= and the MaxFileCache= settings to the desired value.
NOTE: The value for these settings are in kilobytes. For example, if you want to create a 50-MB cache that cannot exceed 55 MB, the lines would be as follows:
[VCache]
MinFileCache=51200
MaxFileCache=56320
Please note that Microsoft’s testing did not include cache sizes greater than 40MB. Microsoft makes no guarantees that the cache size will operate correctly when increased above the user interface. Microsoft is not responsible for data loss or data corruption due to a cache size larger than the user interface".
Regards,
Davin
www.davin-photography.com
"Voivod" wrote in message
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 06:47:51 GMT, "Davin"
scribbled:
I would suggest removing any RAM over 512MB to start off with – you are lucky to be starting windows let alone Photoshop.
Windows 9x will not use over 256 MB of RAM either – so anything over that
is
irrelevant to the operating system – even though it detects it.
This is complete and utter bullshit. Windows 9x can
address up to four GIGs of RAM (2 physical, 2 virtual).
I don’t know where this idiotic "Windows 9x can’t
address more than 256 megs of ram started, but it’s
entirely crap.