BIG NEWS -- Not only did I get a BSOD, I got a NEW BSOD!

[MichaelD]

Holy crap; hell has frozen over. I still use Win98SE, due to 75% of my home PC time being spent gaming. BSOD are truly a rarity for me. I guess I'm lucky.

Well, a few minutes ago I was play DeusEx, a game that has never given me trouble B4.
Game locked up out of nowhere. CtrlAltDel didn't work. Hard-rebooted.

Ran Norton System Works system checkup/diagnostic scan. 10 tests that check everything from the registry to shortcuts to system fragmentation.

While it was running it's scan, I got a BSOD, it said;

WINDOWS IS RUNNING DANGEROUSLY LOW ON MEMORY, NORTON MAY NOT BE ABLE TO FINISH HIT ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.

I've never seen that in my life. Of course, I exited out of Norton. Went to My Computer->System properties->Performance 75% free. WTF?

I have 512mb of RAM! I also have the conservativeswapfileusage=1 Reg hack in there.

NE1 care to give this one a go? Thanks...I'm stumped. BTW, it's running fine now...'ya got me.....

 

[dowxp]

probably just a random error.

 

[Mork]

Yep, I got that error too while playing Half-Life. I use NAV and have 384 MB ram.

 

[1967mustangman]

Cool! That is really funny. You seem to be initiated into the fold of sophisticated BSODer's

 

[Guilty]

Did you limit vcache? I recommend the following:
c:\windows\system.ini

[vcache]
maxfilecache=32768
minfilecache=32768
chunksize=2048

Second, if you're using CSFU=1 then make sure you're letting windows manage swap, since it should never have to use it anyway. If you define a static swap and use CSFU=1, then windows will find SOMETHING to move to swap.

 

[MichaelD]

OK Guilty; you win the "Freeze Mike's Brain Prize" for tonight. I didn't even know about those tweaks...sheesh, just when you think you are Win98 Jedi Master.... I want to try these tweaks, but B4 I do, R there any negative possbile consequences? Thanks much for your time...you R obviously more experienced w/Win98 than I am. *All bow to Win98 YODA*

 

[travws]

I'm just popping off before Guilty does. The settings he recomends will not harm your computer and you can change them at any time in windows. Just takes a reboot. Anyway, The csfu=1 means conservative swap file u(something)=1 (true). It will use up all of the system memory before swapping on your harddrive.

Or, it could be the beer talking. Even if i'm wrong in the details it still won't permanently harm your machine. Just change the settings then reboot.

trav

 

[MrWhiteUK]

<< It will use up all of the system memory before swapping on your harddrive. >>



I'm sure it doesn't use ALL available mem, think it gets down to aboubt 50Mb before it swaps out to the HD, well it did on mine

 

[PuterWiz]

this is just a suggestion... you should have less ram with Win98, when you get up to 512mb windows slows dont due to haveing to manage the ram, and with games it will really help to have less. 256 should be enough, but just 512 + is to much for win98. just my 0.02.

 

[kennyG]

First I would check Deivce Mgr to see if there are any Conflicts with any hardware..And up date all drives video,s,ultra ata controllers,soundcard..I mean cover everything.. I found out that sometimes if you have a conflict it will &quot;WACK&quot; out things you would never think of..And Norton may be good but if that locks up..It's best to look around yourself..

 

[thorin]

travws
&quot;csfu=1 means conservative swap file u(something)=1 (true)&quot;

The U is Usage

Thorin

 

[Guilty]

Windows 9X default vcache wasnt designed with large amounts of RAM in mind. Back when everyone had 32MB's of RAM, your software had to use as much as it could to run things like multi-media smooth. But jump forward, to today with 512MB's of RAM. Without limiting the vcache windows will try to fill as much memory as it can with buffering, like for example if you play a 15MB video file it will read the whole thing into vcache. The problem is it doesnt give up vcache easily, so after a few times you end up with it saying you're low on resources. So I suggest a static 32MB vcache for anything over 256MB's, with a chunk of 2MB's. It can always be edited and reset with a reboot, and doesnt affect anything adversely in my experience.

 

[MichaelD]

OK, I'll give it a shot. Thanks. One other question. Someone suggested that I take out 256mb of memory. I currently have 512. Good stuff, too. Taking into account the tweaks that you suggest, should I take out 1/2 my memory or leave it. Thanks again.

 

[Guilty]

Absolutely not. The idea that Windows9X chokes with 512MB's is inaccurate, Microsoft has addressed it here with the vcache tweak I posted. Windows 9X may not use memory as efficiently and intelligently as NT/2K, but it does USE it and having memory available is always better than swapping to virtual memory.

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks Guilty! I'm off to tweak the registry! Have a Happy Fourth of July!

 

[MichaelD]

Argh. I followed the link to the Windows Knowledge base and read the article. Apparently, the chunksize is related to the size of the MAX/MIN Vcache.

Being that my max/min vcache will be 524288 for 512mb of ram, what should my chunksize be? I don't even know what chunksize is! Help!

 

[Guilty]

Vcache is divided into &quot;chunks&quot; for access. Generally 1MB for < 16MB's of vcache and 2MB's for anything over is optimal.

Edit: Cacheman is also a good program to set the values for you.

 

[carolinaboy]

my vcache key in sytem.ini is empty. is that normal? also, where would i find the &quot;csfu= &quot; key? would it be in &quot;vcache&quot;? i've searched the whole system.ini file and found nothing mentioning csfu=

thanx

 

[Guilty]

It's &quot;ConservativeSwapFileUsage=&quot; under the &quot;[386Enh]&quot; section in system.ini. If the values dont exist you just key them in yourself. No vcache defined is standard, it has to be added.

 

[MichaelD]

OK, so the Chunksize just tells virtual memory what size &quot;pieces&quot; to use at a time? Thanks.

 

[aUt0eXebat]

hey just to let you know, Windows 2000 Pro is sweet with gaming, even more stable. I do tons of gaming also.
All you need is SP2, DX8a, latest video/sound drivers..... havent BSOD yet!

 

[kennyG]

<< hey just to let you know, Windows 2000 Pro is sweet with gaming, even more stable. I do tons of gaming also. >>



Your so right..TIGHT as a drum..