Dual Channel memory problem

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eiurgoleiop

Hello, I have a 3 ghtz P4 machine with 512meg of dual channel memory running
windows 98 and windows xp. No problems whatsoever. I recently upgraded my
memory to 1 gig of the SAME memory (another two 256 dual channel chips). I
am know seeing all kinds of problems (blue screens, out of memory msgs, etc)
in windows 98 while windows xp works perfectly. Is there any possibility
the additional memory could be causing problems in win98? I got the exact
same type/model number of memory (OCZ memory) and it's running in dual
channel mode correctly according to the bios. Any ideas would be
appreciated.
 
Hello, I have a 3 ghtz P4 machine with 512meg of dual channel memory running
windows 98 and windows xp. No problems whatsoever. I recently upgraded my
memory to 1 gig of the SAME memory (another two 256 dual channel chips). I
am know seeing all kinds of problems (blue screens, out of memory msgs, etc)
in windows 98 while windows xp works perfectly. Is there any possibility
the additional memory could be causing problems in win98? I got the exact
same type/model number of memory (OCZ memory) and it's running in dual
channel mode correctly according to the bios. Any ideas would be
appreciated.
Click to expand...

The good news is it's not a hardware problem, it's an OS bug.
You got bit by the rogue Win98 vcache (file caching) driver, which rears its
nasty head anytime you have more than 512MB of memory on a Win98 machine.

You can work around this problem - essentially limiting the amount of memory
that the vcache driver can use - by adding a line or two to your
<windir>system.ini file, as follows:

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=262144

The [vcache] line is optional, it's just a label.
The value of MaxFileCache must be smaller than 512MB and is expressed in
KBytes. The example value shown above allows the vcache driver to use up to
256MB of memory for file caching.

Make this change to system.ini, reboot Win98, and you shoot be good to go. The
only thing you lose is the maximum file cache capacity...

/daytripper
 
The issue with over 512M of ram is that with Win9x you have
to limit vcache, in system.ini, to no more that 512M.
Over in the M$ groups, the consensus
seems to be 70% of your available ram for less than 768M.
It's specified in kilobytes. NT based systems don't have the
problem.
Put this in your system.ini -----

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=524000
 
Win 98, be design, can only recognize up to 512 MB of RAM. If you install
more, the system will not be stable.
 
Win 98, be design, can only recognize up to 512 MB of RAM. If you install
more, the system will not be stable.
Click to expand...

That statement, along with the top-posting, is incorrect.

hth ;-)
 
eiurgoleiop said in news:[email protected]:
Hello, I have a 3 ghtz P4 machine with 512meg of dual channel memory
running windows 98 and windows xp. No problems whatsoever. I
recently upgraded my memory to 1 gig of the SAME memory (another two
256 dual channel chips). I am know seeing all kinds of problems
(blue screens, out of memory msgs, etc) in windows 98 while windows
xp works perfectly. Is there any possibility the additional memory
could be causing problems in win98? I got the exact same type/model
number of memory (OCZ memory) and it's running in dual channel mode
correctly according to the bios. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

If you want to read a Microsoft KB article regarding what all the others are citing, see:

"Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM Installed
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=253912

As noted in the last paragraph, setting a large aperture for your AGP video card can exacerbate the problem. So reduce the BIOS setting for AGP aperture down to 64MB unless you have benchmarked your *critical* applications to see that they do indeed run faster with a larger AGP aperture. Obviously something like word processing won't benefit since YOU are by far the slowest component and the software is repeatedly waiting an digital eon between your keystrokes. Besides, using a high AGP aperture size rarely affords any benefit in performance (since you want apps that use the much faster video RAM on the video card than use the much slower system RAM, so get a video card with lots of onboard VRAM). See http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/aperture-size/ and http://www.ocfaq.com/article.php/overclocking/vidcard/43 regarding the setting of AGP aperture. The more onboard VRAM you have on your video card, the less likely that you need to steal any slower system RAM. Also, many games are coded to NOT use more memory than what you have on your video card (or assume that you only have 64MB of VRAM) so increasing the AGP aperture size won't help them run faster. Start with a 64MB AGP aperture, and only if you notice stuttering, like within your game, then increase it. Other than possible for games (which don't code to restrict themselves to remain within VRAM) and maybe CAD software, I'm not sure for what else you would need a large APG aperture.
 
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