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Why - out of environment space?

J

Jeff H

Golden Member
Guys,

I'm in need of help to determine why I'm getting an "out of environment space" error on a Win98SE machine, after installing a third stick of memory. Here's the details - Abit BH6, 256MB PC100, Powerleap 1.2GHz CeleronII, Win98SE. I installed a third stick of 128MB PC133 memory and first boot came up fine.

Subsequent boots go in a rebooting loop, and a boot to DOS indicates the "out of environment space" error. I cannot boot into Windows even after removing the third stick, setting BIOS defaults, reconfiguring the BH6 BIOS for the cpu, etc.

What am I missing here? Your help/advice/suggestions will be greatly appreciated. This is my brother/sister in-laws machine and I don't want to leave them down. I did a Google search and came up w/ a suggestion to increase the shell environment size. Is it as simple as that? I seem to remember another setting that fixes this but for the life of me I can recall it. HELP!
 
Modify the Environment for All MS-DOS Programs
To increase the default environment space for all MS-DOS programs running in Windows, edit the Shell command in the Config.sys file. To do this, follow these steps:
Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type sysedit, and then click OK.
Click the Config.sys window.
At the beginning of the Shell= line, type REM, and then press the SPACEBAR.

If the Shell= line does not exist, proceed to the next step.
Press the HOME key.
Type the following line to create a new Shell= line, and then press ENTER:
SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM /E:4096 /P

On the File menu, click Save.
On the File menu, click Exit.
Restart the computer.

Straight from Microsoft.com
 
Markfw900, thanks for the reply. I'm going to try the shell= thing tomorrow. Could that be the cause of Windows not wanting to start? I'm going to have to do this from a command prompt as I can't get into Windows right now, it simply reboots and reboots and reboots.

Could the system.ini setting in [386Enh] (MinSPs=X) also be a factor?
 
Markfw900, FWIW this machine was on borrowed time b4 I got to it. And, here's a surprise, they hadn't done any backups since I was there at Christmas time. Well, I guess they'll now get religion. Nothing I did, re shell= or MinSPs had any effect. So, it's time for getting the critical files off via DOS and reformat/reinstall.
 
Sounds like the third stick of RAM is confusing the chipset. Take it out and replace it with a compatible stick of memory.
 
MadRat, the funny thing is I took out that third stick and the system remained flakey. The first boot after memory install went fine, then blue screens and continual reboot. I took out the third stick to no avail. Both brother and sister in law commented that the system seemed slow lately, and it sure seems that the third stick threw Windows for a loop, literally. IMO they've gone far too long w/o a reformat and install to clean things up, considering the amount of programs they've installed and uninstalled. Too much junk for Win98SE to deal w/ and it finally gave up the ghost.
 
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