I have 512MB of RAM in my system... can I disable Virtual Memory?

[Whitedog]

I do recall over a couple years ago when I did run Win98 at work and begin to experience low memory problems (as I increased in the number of apps I was running).

I then upgraded from 128 to 256MB and gained ZERO capabilities. I still couldn't run any more than before...

That's when I did the research and learned all about Win98's wonderful memory management and it's limitation of 128 megs..

That's when I went to NT4

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Whitedog, I'm sorry but you are wrong. I ran Windows 95ORS2.5 with 256MB of RAM and it loved it (I multitask heavily). However, for your average user in 95/98, they'll never use the full amount simply because windows doesn't need it. In Win2k, you can almost always use more RAM...so you see better performance improvements.

It's not smart to disregard someone's credibility due to a myth you happen to have much (unfounded) faith in. I have heard a lot of people say that Windows 95/98 can't utilize more than 128MB of RAM, and I've heard them corrected a thousand times over. Trust us. It can and will utilize more than 128MB if it needs it.

 

[Whitedog]

<<Trust us?>> uh, no. I don't trust what I read here. I trust what my eyes see.

<<It's not smart to disregard someone's credibility due to a myth you happen to have much (unfounded) faith in>>

Uh, ok. If you say so.

 

[ElCuCuy]

Whitedog,

Win9x kernel can absolutely use more than 128mb of RAM, however, &quot;effectively&quot; is quite a relative term. Just because the OS cannot use the memory effectively does not mean that applications that run within it cannot also. Try playing UT or HL with a heapsize of over 200,000 in win9x, or doing a gaussian blur on a 300mb photoshop file with 128mb and 256mb and you'll see what I mean.

 

[Whitedog]

I'm talking about Multi-tasking.. Try loading up 6 programs that use about 25 megs ram each. (I do this at work everyday), you'll get memory errors.

Not multitasking MS office and solitair

 

[oldfart]

I've upgraded several Win9x systems from 128 meg to 256+. The difference is very noticeable. That 128 meg limit is a myth.

 

[JellyBaby]

The &quot;128 MB limit&quot; Win 98x limit might be in the virtual memory dept. I recall seeing a few posts were the claim was made Win 9x just would not use more than 128 MB of swapfile regardless of your settings.

 

[StanTheMan]

Who said that winME have a better memory management than win98SE?
They're just the same. CAn utilize only up to 512 meg.
check it here:
From Microsoft

 

[Turbopit]

Why am I usning almost all my ram shortly after start up without starting up anything like Photoshop?

I know I probably need to clean up my start up. What exactly has to start up? This thing is swapping before I even start doing anything with 256 megs of ram, Win98 managing my swap file, and the CSWU=1 added?

 

[SUOrangeman]

Wow, I've just read every response in this thread for the first time. Interesting situation, no matter how you look at it.

Here's my current twist on things: I share the same swap file (pagefile.sys) between Win2K and WinME+CSFU. I have it permanently set to 320MB, with 256MB of RAM. Why that size? I really don't remember why, but I don't honestly think I've seen any slower performance.

Here's what I'm gonna do. I will set a minimum of 100MB (seems to be decent minumum for Win2K) for both OSes. I'll try to monitor the file's size over time and see what happens. Hopefully, I'll remember to post my findings.

I will probably reference this thread whenever I update the partitioing dissertation.

Keep posting!

-SUO

 

[ArchAngel777]

You guys are morons, why don't you read what the hell I read instead of skimming it. this is the main difference from SE to ME, SE can use 1 fukking gig of ram if needs be, but after that gig is used will windows restore that ram? fukk no, not without a restart, even RAM Defraggers do not free up more 128 megs of ram on 98SE or lower, however on WinME memory releases itself a lot better. You talk about imcompatabilities.. yet i have faced none, I run many things, games NEwsgroups... downloads galore (cable modem) Like i said never do i get an error, and never will I.

So can you use win98 if you have more than 128 megs of mem? hell yeah and you will find a huge performance difference, but is it gonna manage it and free up more than 128? no. WinME will.

Seriously, I am tired of argueing over the entire topic. You can beleive what you wan't too.
All i can say is that me and Dog over there are SWAP free and happy we are.. no problems for either of us.

Please no flames, because I will not respond to them.

~THE END~

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Whitedog, if you are referring to &quot;system resources are low&quot; type errors, this is true. But not because windows can't use more than 128MB of memory. Your system resources in Win9x are not really determined by how much physical memory you have, unfortunately.

 

[BFG10K]

Whitedog:

Sorry BFG, but that just blew your credibility with me.

This concerns me how? Your credibility was blown the minute you started spouting rubbish about the mythical 128 MB memory limit.

I know better than that.

Do you? Not from what I've seen.

I've never read where Win98 can properly manage more than 128 megs..

I've never seen or read anywhere that it can't handle more than 128 MB. You are the one claiming that Windows has a problem. So it's up to you back it up with hard facts.

that's been a known since MS rolled it out.

Only by people like you who continue to spread the myth in order to appear smart. Look around you in this thread. Count the number of people who say their Windows 9x/ME systems are running better when they increased their RAM total to greater than 128 MB.

Look at the MS technical pages. Show me one page that says Windows 9x/ME can't handle more than 128 MB of RAM.

I probably should have limited my claims of testing to WinME since I haven't run Win98 in like... a long time, and certainly didn't do any kind of test like this back then.

There is no fundemental difference between Windows 9x and Windows ME. Microsoft might have tweaked some parts of ME (from what I've seen they've made it worse, but that's another story), but the kernel and the memory manager are still essentially the same.

I do recall over a couple years ago when I did run Win98 at work and begin to experience low memory problems (as I increased in the number of apps I was running).

Funny, I've never had any such problems. Are you sure you just hadn't screwed up your swapfile settings because of your vendetta against Windows using virtual memory? It's likely that you were too smart for your own good.

That's when I did the research and learned all about Win98's wonderful memory management and it's limitation of 128 megs..

Would you care to provide me with some hard evidence of this &quot;research&quot;? It sounds like a user problem to me.

I'm talking about Multi-tasking.. Try loading up 6 programs that use about 25 megs ram each. (I do this at work everyday), you'll get memory errors.

Funny I've done a lot of those sorts of tests and I never had any problems. At one point I had opened GLQuake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Unreal, MS Visual C++, MS Word, Warcraft 2, Diablo and several copies of Internet Explorer on my 192 MB machine.

When I checked the system monitor 188 MB of my 192 MB of RAM was in use (4 MB was unused and being kept as spare, possible for future caching) and Windows had also grown the swapfile size to more than 400 MB. So as you can see, Windows has no trouble accesing more memory than the magical 128 MB limit, both with real RAM and the swapfile.

I'm not a programmer, but I think I might be able to add to this from some things I know

The explanation you gave was extremely limited and simplistic. When you open a program under Windows, the memory manager does *much* more than just load your program into memory. There are many other things that happen.

And BTW, I am a programmer.

StanTheMan:

CAn utilize only up to 512 meg.

Windows 9x/ME may have issues with more than 512 MB of RAM but those issues can be fixed by limiting the size of the disk cache to 512 MB or limiting the size of the AGP aperture size to 128 MB.

Windows 9x/ME can use as much RAM as a 32 bit CPU supports (ie 4 GB) and I've heard reports of systems running 768 MB RAM very succesfully.

 

[Smbu]

If you are using Win98(not sure about ME) I recommend you get cacheman. It is a great (free) little program. I'm currently running Win98SE using 256mb RAM w/180mb(min/max) swap file.

I'm using the Win98->power user setting w/everything enabled in cacheman(minimal disk cache 512kb, maximal disk cache 10240kb, chunk size 2048, name cache 4096, directory cache 96).

Now whenever I check Windows never uses my swap file and my free memory always stays above 100mb. All of my free resources never drop below 50%(system, GDI, user). Prior to this windows would always waste all of my physical memory and use up the swap file. If I used my computer for awhile I could even see my system resources drop to 2-3% and get messages like &quot;there is not enough memory to open this application&quot;

I highly recommend you try this out(make sure all of the boxes are checked off as enabled). I don't know if it works in Win2k.

 

[OS]

whitedog

is 384 mb enough to run VM off in NT4?

 

[Turbopit]

I love it when someone calls everyone a moron, then says &quot;no flames&quot; LOL What the phuck? That's like when someone starts out with &quot;No offense, but,&quot;


So none of you experts have any advice for the problem I think I am having? You'd rather just argue amongst yourselves?

 

[randomlinh]

what exactly is in your startup?

here's my opinion.. everyone just go buy some solid state HD's

 

[Whitedog]

<<I've never seen or read anywhere that it can't handle more than 128 MB>>

BFG, Uhmm, &quot;Handle&quot; and &quot;properly manage&quot; are two totally different things. Go ahead and say what you will... Programmer... I've been the lead PC specialist at a large corporation for years.. I build Every PC in the company and tweak them all... I happen to have plenty of experience to know a little about what I'm talking about. Quit being so damn bent on &quot;trying&quot; to make it &quot;look&quot; like I don't know what I'm talking about.
No, I don't know it all, don't claim to. I just state what I do know. You can take your &quot;back it up with hard facts&quot; attitude elsewhere.

Sure, load your 192MB Win98 system up and run it a good while. THEN, close everything out, and try to &quot;load it up&quot; again with totally different programs... Keep doing this, you'll run into major problems...

OK, enough. I'm not trying to Flame you BFG, just you and I are obviously not on the same page here. I know Win98 can &quot;use&quot; a Gob of memory, but once you use it up, you basically have to reboot to reclaim it. Am I wrong about that too? As long as you throw punches at me, I will respond in the same tone!

On to some Real honest questions

<<is 384 mb enough to run VM off in NT4?>>

I don't have a lot of time... gotta get ready for date, but I'll try to post what I tested last night.

First off, you can't Run NT4 or 2000 with VM disabled... You do have a LOT more control over it though, which is Really good.

I run Win2K with 384 megs ram... I did some tweaking with the registry (Thanks sitka! for the good website) and did some monitoring last night and have some good news...

After making the registry changes, I had a minimum Pagefile size of 20MB. I opened Performance monitor and checked my pagefile, it was sitting at 6 megs (30%), I then fired up photoshop, did some gooding around, then I opened Paint Shop Pro and opened about 50 JPG's. Then I fired off Counter Strike (with the others still running)... Pagefile never increased beyong 20MB.

I exited everything and checked the Performance monitor, and Pagefile was back to 6MB, and the physical memory was back to where it started.

I fired everything back up like it was, PLUS, I opened about 6 other programs, this time Pagefile increased to 51MB. The only thing I hate, is windows bothers you to tell you it is increasing the pagefile.

Closed it all down and pagefile usage was back to 6MB and all the memory was available again... though the size of the pagefile remained 51 MB until I rebooted and it dropped back to the minimum specified (20MB)

Conclusion, You can be safe by setting your minimum pagefile to 60-80 MB if you do a little tweaking. (Go read here) You can be assured that even though you have the minimum set at XMB, windows will only put data into it as it see's fit. I can't vouch for 9x, as I believe it doesn't work with near this efficiency.

Turbopit, it sounds like you have several &quot;services&quot; running that are causing your situation, but not being able to look at your computer, is too hard to say for sure.

Final Words,
If you're wanting to have a system with LOADS of memory, I can only tell you to get Windows 2000! Or, just live with having to reboot to free your memory up. (or use whatever 3rd party utility??) :Q

VM is No big deal when we are talking 6-50 MB's. These people that use 256MB of VM are insane!

Later on doods...

 

[JellyBaby]

Win 98SE does have trouble giving you back system resources and memory. For instance, with 128 MB of RAM after loading 10 fat programs then releasing them, Winny will not reclaim everything. About 6 MB of memory &quot;disappears&quot;.

Today I added another 128 MB. Using the same test, I saw the same result: after closing those 10 applications, about 6 MB of memory was &quot;gone&quot;. Poor memory management.

Win2K might be better but it's a mute point. Running Win 9x with 256 is definitely worthwhile. Win 9x handles it, it manages it well enough and you'll definitely notice a difference! You may need to reboot now and again but if you run Win98 that's practically a habit anyway.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

>> I know Win98 can &quot;use&quot; a Gob of memory, but once you use it up, you basically have to reboot to reclaim it. Am I wrong about that too? <<

Yup. You're wrong. I was able to leave my Win95C system running for days on end (longest uptime was several weeks), multitasking and running many different programs, I did not get memory errors.

>> For instance, with 128 MB of RAM after loading 10 fat programs then releasing them, Winny will not reclaim everything. About 6 MB of memory &quot;disappears&quot;.

Today I added another 128 MB. Using the same test, I saw the same result: after closing those 10 applications, about 6 MB of memory was &quot;gone&quot;. Poor memory management.<<

This is mostly due to the fact that all necessary drivers and system files are not loaded on bootup, but rather they are loaded when they are first needed, and then they are left in main memory until windows restarts. If you've got plenty of memory this is not an issue.

 

[Turbopit]

Whitedog,

It looks like one of the biggest ram hogs is the one thing I was using to check ram use along with about 6 or 7 other parameters. After getting rid of Norton's system monitor and a few other things out of start up, this thing is no longer swapping right away, or as much. Still seems to be eating up the ram damn quick. I downloaded Memturbo this week which seems to do a descent job of getting your memory back, but is it as good as shtting down?

Thanks

 

[StanTheMan]

BFG10K
please be aware between UTILIZE and USING
If u said that win98 can use memory up to 4 GB, I suppose u've never read microsoft knowledge base abt that one. I dunno about ME, but Win98 can only use up to 768 of RAM.
here it is:

From Microsoft

 

[BFG10K]

Whitedog:

Quit being so damn bent on &quot;trying&quot; to make it &quot;look&quot; like I don't know what I'm talking about.

Usually I wouldn't care what you think. But in this case you're one of the people responsible for spreading the 128 MB limit myth and misleading other people.

You can take your &quot;back it up with hard facts&quot; attitude elsewhere.



Sure, load your 192MB Win98 system up and run it a good while. THEN, close everything out, and try to &quot;load it up&quot; again with totally different programs... Keep doing this, you'll run into major problems

I've done that as well. Although usually I shut my machine down at the end of each day, one time I left it running for 3 days and ran a wide variety of programs the the manner you describe. I didn't have any &quot;out of memory&quot; errors or memory leaks. But that could just be because I let Windows handle my swapfile instead of pretending to be an expert and trying to stuff around with it.

I know Win98 can &quot;use&quot; a Gob of memory, but once you use it up, you basically have to reboot to reclaim it. Am I wrong about that too?

You *are* wrong. You still don't get it do you? If the RAM isn't reported as free it doesn't mean it's been leaked. Due to the dynamic nature of the Windows memory manager, there are lots of reasons Windows will still hold on to that RAM (caching, dynamic drivers etc). Needless to say when you need that RAM, Windows will release it.

StanTheMan:

If u said that win98 can use memory up to 4 GB, I suppose u've never read microsoft knowledge base abt that one. I dunno about ME, but Win98 can only use up to 768 of RAM.

Yes, you're right about that. I was thinking of Windows NT 4/2000 when I said 4 GB. I don't know how high Windows ME can go.

Regardless of this, that article article quite clearly mentions 768 MB is the limit, not 128 MB. So I think we can finally put this issue to rest.

 

[Whitedog]

This is almost getting comical. hehe

According to what that article says, it's saying &quot;If&quot; your computer is having problems, you &quot;can limit&quot; it to only 768 &quot;by adding a switch to the system.ini&quot;. It's not saying that's Windows Limit.

What about this article? It says Windows 95 can access and use up to 2GB physicle RAM?

We're starting to contradict each other now

 

[BowDown]

You guys are nuttz .

But thanks for the info ...