win98se sucks at memory management...suggestions?

[Alex]

hey,

in a nutshell, athlonC1.4, crucial 512mb pc2100. win98se.

my rig lags often and its not the HD (fast 7200rpm) i got FreeRamXP Lite and found out that most of the times theres only about 100-200mb of my 512 free...even when there's absolutely nothing open except for windows ('explorer' and 'systray'). After running the program sure enough i have 400mb free...which is good but still quite low (on my bros 128mb ram rig with winxp it only ever used like 20-30mb when idle like that).

i read in the FAQs that win9x can handle upto 512mb ... but mine doesn't seem to be doing this very well.... any suggestions?

(oh and i mean practical ones, not buy windowsxp or something... )

thx!

 

[Derango]

Only thing you can do is get an OS with better memory management. win2k or XP. Sorry

 

[singh]

Yup, ditch Windows 98. Get an NT-based OS.

 

[Heifetz]

Get with the times, either XP or 2k will be a much better os.


Heifetz

 

[BCYL]

the win9x kernel (which included winME) is HORRIBLE at memory management... even if there are still physical memory free, it will still go into swap...

The only way to truly fix the problem would be upgrade to either win2k or winXP...

 

[kurt454]

Originally posted by: franguinho
hey,

in a nutshell, athlonC1.4, crucial 512mb pc2100. win98se.

my rig lags often and its not the HD (fast 7200rpm) i got FreeRamXP Lite and found out that most of the times theres only about 100-200mb of my 512 free...even when there's absolutely nothing open except for windows ('explorer' and 'systray'). After running the program sure enough i have 400mb free...which is good but still quite low (on my bros 128mb ram rig with winxp it only ever used like 20-30mb when idle like that).

i read in the FAQs that win9x can handle upto 512mb ... but mine doesn't seem to be doing this very well.... any suggestions?

(oh and i mean practical ones, not buy windowsxp or something... )


thx!

Do a google search for Cacheman 4.1. It is freeware, and might help some. I use it on all of my Win98 installations.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: franguinho
oh and i mean practical ones, not buy windowsxp or something...

That is the only practical answer I have, get Win 2K/XP!

With that said there is a program that you can use to help clean up your RAM that I used to use when I ran Win 98 (that would be 1998 and most of 1999 before I got 2K) called Memturbo, it seemed to do a decent job.

-Spy

In all honesty though please listen to what everyone is saying here, Win 9x sucks and needs to die. Friends dont let friends run Win 9x

 

[pcman2002b]

I learned from some guy that over 128MB of any RAM in Win98 actually makes it slower. The more you have the slower it goes. Apparently this is due to the fact that Win98 can't address that memory properly. Also because the stack files in the old-fart DOS background are fixed they can't adjust to different amounts of crap. So if you have a high res wallpaper, craploads of fonts, etc. your computer will run even slower. Sorry for the bad news but I have to agree with the others, get with the times Jethro (just kidding), Win2K or XP.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: pcman2002b
I learned from some guy that over 128MB of any RAM in Win98 actually makes it slower...

I'm not sure who you heard that from, but it is not true.

Windows 98 will not use large amouts of RAM very efficiently, however it will still use it so the system will be faster with more than 128.

-spy

 

[BCYL]

Originally posted by: pcman2002b
I learned from some guy that over 128MB of any RAM in Win98 actually makes it slower. The more you have the slower it goes. Apparently this is due to the fact that Win98 can't address that memory properly. Also because the stack files in the old-fart DOS background are fixed they can't adjust to different amounts of crap. So if you have a high res wallpaper, craploads of fonts, etc. your computer will run even slower. Sorry for the bad news but I have to agree with the others, get with the times Jethro (just kidding), Win2K or XP.

That is simply not true... Yes win9x kernel wont be able to use the extra memory efficiently, but it will not make it slower... the extra memory will just get wasted and not used...

And as for can't address the memory properly, I believe the limit is 512mb, not 128mb...

 

[heat23]

Yup whenever I used Win98 or Win95, my computer would become EXTREMELY sluggish forcing me to reboot like every hour....
But with Win2k and Winxp, that doesnt happen. I once had Win2k running for 55 days straight without a hitch

 

[jrichrds]

Get Cacheman 5.11 from outertech.com. It's freeware, has good tweaks, and can also recover physical memory like the freeram program you're running now. I'm running Win98SE with 512MB on one of the computers, and it runs great. With "Conversative Swap File Usage" turned on through Cacheman, the swap file never gets touched anymore. And this comp feels quicker and more responsive than another faster computer I have running Win2k.
I don't have the problem you're having where most of the RAM is used up at startup though.
But if you run Cacheman at startup, you should be okay.

EDIT: Yes, the effective limit for Win98 is 512MB RAM.

 

[Migroo]

Originally posted by: singh
Yup, ditch Windows 98. Get an NT-based OS.

 

[Dark1]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

Originally posted by: franguinho
oh and i mean practical ones, not buy windowsxp or something...

That is the only practical answer I have, get Win 2K/XP!

With that said there is a program that you can use to help clean up your RAM that I used to use when I ran Win 98 (that would be 1998 and most of 1999 before I got 2K) called Memturbo, it seemed to do a decent job.

-Spy

In all honesty though please listen to what everyone is saying here, Win 9x sucks and needs to die. Friends dont let friends run Win 9x

Yes Memturbo might help you out but it would be better to upgrade. Try it until you have enough money for an upgrade. Newegg sells oems for a good price.

 

[Slapstick]

You need to adjust your Vcache settings and Cacheman is a good program to use to it. Win9x versions will try to grab as much available ram as it can to use as its disk cache and then it?s supposed to release it as programs require. The problem is that Win9x doesn?t always release the memory and so it forces the use of the swap file. By manually setting the Vcache size to a more conservative value you reserve most of your free ram for programs.

 

[Alex]

Thaks for all the answers guys!

I took a look at cacheman and it seems good but i don't want any 3rd party programs so I dide the wise thing and bought xp!

<-- succumbed to peer pressure

 

[Mem]

I took a look at cacheman and it seems good but i don't want any 3rd party programs so I dide the wise thing and bought xp!

Good idea ,I`m actually using cacheman on my 98 PC & it works well,however on my other WinXP PC I find you don`t really need cacheman being XP is very good at handling memory.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: Mem

I took a look at cacheman and it seems good but i don't want any 3rd party programs so I dide the wise thing and bought xp!

Good idea ,I`m actually using cacheman on my 98 PC & it works well,however on my other WinXP PC I find you don`t really need cacheman being XP is very good at handling memory.

thing is i'm haiving problems installing XP... any help greatly appreciated!!!

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=34&threadid=836673

 

[Alex]

problem solved!

<-- winxp fan!