Can you safely run 512MB of System RAM in Win98SE? Guides to make it work?

[Noriaki]

I have 512MB of RAM in my new rig...I'm thinking of installing Win98SE...will that work?

Will that be too much RAM for Win98SE to deal with?

 

[Viper GTS]

It'll work fine, that's what I have in my 98 system at home.

Above 512 is supposedly where you start running into strange errors, though I've never seen any good evidence of it. Just rumors.

Viper GTS

 

[ThisIsMatt]

Some things you can do to make win98(se or not) run better are to set your file system to "Network Server" and also make your swap file static. You can also do some other stuff that I'd have to look up to tell you

 

[Viper GTS]

The "rule of thumb" for setting the swap size is to make it 2x your physical amount of memory, so in your case 1024mb for the min & max. Personally I'd set it lower, but I have no empirical evidence to back up my choice - I think mine is set at 256mb min/max, and I have 256mb of ram.

No, no, no...

That would mean the more RAM you have the more swap file you would need, this is incorrect. With 512 MB in 98 you could set your swap file for 20 MB & probably never run out of memory. You do NOT need a gig of HD space as virtual memory if you have 512 MB RAM.

Viper GTS

 

[Gstanfor]

Yes, you can run more than 512megs on Win98SE.

I'm currently running 640mb on the big machine (now thanks to nVidia I get to purchase more memory, DDR this time), no trouble, no slowdowns - the machine has never been faster.

See my post in MichaelD's thread for config details.

Greg

 

[Noriaki]

I used to use the 2-2.5x rule when I was installed 8-16MB in Win3.11 machines...for 512MB in Win98SE I think that it's a bit overkill

Hell I'll set up a 32MB RAM drive and use *that* as my "virtual" memory

ATM I have Win2000 but as time goes by I find more and more little things about it that annoy me for no good reason...I find it more and more likely every day that I will own WinXP at some point....

So I think I might just sell off my Win2000 and run Win98SE for a few months until XP is out.

I just want to make sure that my machine won't explode from Win98SE with 512Mb

 

[ThisIsMatt]

Noriaki - yeah, I agree, that's why I have mine less...

 

[BlackWob]

There was a rumor that came about when MS released 98 that the 9x kernel only supported 512mb of RAM. This is untrue I think; it has virtually limitless support. I personally do not know anyone running more than 256mb but I'm sure anyone that works with video editing or Photoshop as a job has more than 512mb installed.

As far as my swap file I have it set to 200mb and I have 160mb installed. I don't really care if it is taking 160mb of HDD more than it should because I really don't care if I can store 1 more MP3 album.

 

[tasslex]

<< There was a rumor that came about when MS released 98 that the 9x kernel only supported 512mb of RAM. This is untrue I think; it has virtually limitless support. I personally do not know anyone running more than 256mb but I'm sure anyone that works with video editing or Photoshop as a job has more than 512mb installed. >>



If anyone who uses Photoshop for their job runs it in Windows98 they deserve all the errors they get!

 

[Noriaki]

LOL!
No no...RAM is just super cheap right now so I picked up 512..I'm running Win2k right now...as I said though I want to go back to Win98SE for a while then up to WinXP. I know WinXP will happily suck my 512MB of ram back...I just don't know how it will behave in Win98SE...I guess there's nothing for it but to try

 

[Viper GTS]

OK, I found my old thread.

Someone in it linked to something I'd forgotten about:

Microsoft Knowledge Base: &quot;Out of Memory&quot; Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM Installed

Viper GTS

 

[Noriaki]

Thanks for the linky.

 

[Dufusyte]

I have 512MB in Win95 OSR2, running great!

OSR2 forever!!

 

[Noriaki]

LOL Yeah I had Win95OSR2 for quite a while. But it hates my USB scanner. The support for AGP and USB were pretty bad even with the USBSupp patch....but it was a nice tight OS...MS still hasn't made any OS as compact and capable as Win95. They just seem to keep adding bloat...
Windows 4's days are numbered though. In a year or two 95 is going to look near as bad as Win3.11 does now.

 

[airis2001]

So I'm running Windows ME with 512megs of ram. Right now my system is set up with a 512meg swap file, one gig seemed like way to much disk slowdown from disk access. Should I just drop the swap file? And what about setting the system setting to network server as wsa stated above?

 

[Dufusyte]

Don't drop the swap file entirely because some programs look for it. With 512 MB ram, you could have a swapfile of 100MB or so, depending on the kinds of apps you tend to use.

I have a V5 apg, and OSR2 seems to handle the agp well enough. According to my roadmap, by the time OSR2 is obsolete, Linux will have conquered the desktop market, so that will be my next OS. Until then, OSR2 forever!!

 

[bjc112]

guys this i kinda of topic but, i have 2k.. and it set my swap to 640.. i have 448 megs of ram.. and do normal things a 16 year old does on a computer... a couple games, napster,winamp, 3-4 IE explorer windows!.. i think it should be more like 100 but what do you guys think.??

 

[Noriaki]

LOL well actually a Voodoo5 is really just a PCI card with an AGP connector...but AGP did work on most cards. It was really more USB than AGP that caused me to drop OSR2...I just lumped AGP in with USB because the USBSupp affects both.

Linux has a long way to go before it can dominate Windows...
A) They have to stop letting techies design the UIs. End users can't use a UI designed by a techie. We think differently.

B) They need to get good support networks in place. I suppose RedHat is working on this...but end users need tech support...and lots of it. And that costs money. I'm all for open source and free OSes...but they don't work for the masses because you have no money production to support the users.

C) They need application support, and while they have most of the important ones...like StarOffice...the interface is very clunky for a user. That goes back to point A. Though if we had users application support would follow, see point B.

Linux is a very good OS...but to make an OS truly Viable you need hte masses. And frankly the masses don't care if it's a good OS or not, they want it easy to use and they want it to run their stuff. And if something goes wrong they want a nice 1-800 number they can call to get someone to fix it.

I hope Linux breaks through and become a major contender, I'll hapily drop MS...and I think it's possible. But it has some work to do.