Windows 98SE & more than 512MB

[Starrx05]

Okay I have this little old problem. One of my PCs is still a P3 866Mhz. It had 2x256MB PC133. I tried to put in 2 more sticks to make it 1GB. Same kind of RAM and it keeps rebooting after showing the Windows logo for few seconds. I tried all the RAM stick combinations and slots. I'm sure none of the DIMM slots is malfunctioned. The RAM sticks work well in another comp. It looks like Windows 98SE can only take up to 512MB and needs some update/change to go beyond that. I know my board can take up to 1GB in 4 slots ECC or non-ECC RAM. I searched at MS web site and couldn't find any articles related to this prob. So if you have any suggestions, plz let me know. Thanks.

 

[3chordcharlie]

I've had this problem adding ram to windows 98 before, and it had nothign to do with a 512mb limit, windows just didn't seem to 'understand' that it had a different amount of ram; I think I usually managed to fix it by clearing the CMOS and forcing everything to update, but that might not have been it, it was really frustrating.

Why do you want a gig of ram with windows 98? It's so bad at memory management anyway that it won't help much.

 

[stevty2889]

Thats a known problem with windows 98. There is a solution though. Boot in to windows wiht 512mb of ram installed. Then there is a registry edit you need to do, don't know what it is off hand, so do a google search for Windows 98 512mb limit. After you have done the fix, put in the rest of the ram, and you'll be good to go.

EDIT: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q181862/

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Why are you using Windows 98 with 1GB of RAM?