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Memory Problem

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by frybrian

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I have a Pentium2 700mhz 384ram 10gb HD now running Windows 98. I have enabled the "System Monitor" and on boot up it will read "Unused Phisical Memory" at about 200M and "Locked Memory" at about 50M. If I do any file swapping, printing or just open and close applications, the "Unused" will drop and the "Locked" will rise and eventually I will have no memory and the system freezes up. I have replaced the three banks of 128m RAM. I was originally running Win95 and I installed another 10Gb HD and loaded Win98. The same problem occurs. Does anyone have any suggestions?

7 replies

by lesdabney67

If at all possible upgrade from Windows98. If you can't do that try re-installing Windows 98 over the top of your current installation. Just re-run the setup and let it re-install windows. Make sure you disable any anti-virus software you are running first. If this doesn't work do a full formatting of the disk and re-install Windows from scratch.

After all that if you still have a problem it is more than likely a hardware problem.

by frybrian

Poster rated this answer.
The new 10GB HD was fdisk, formatted, and win98se installed from scratch. It did solve the problem. Thanks.

by mark

It sounds like something is eating up the memory and you need to identify what it is. Try downloading a task manager for WIN98 like from http://www.bykeyword.com/pages/detail1/download-1977.html and see if it will help you identify the culprit. Then you should be able to know where to look to fix it. I assume you have already done the usual virus and spyware checks.

by frybrian

Poster rated this answer.
I ran the Taskmanager and nothing was running out of the ordinary that would eat up the memory. I also ran spyware and only a couple of harmless files were found. Thanks for the links.

by csmith

This is not a hardware problem, and this is not a Win98SE problem.
The locked memory is the system files and .dlls reguired by the system.
The 200MB free RAM sounds about right when you start up with several applications/threads running. (Push Cntrl,Alt,Del for a quick list some threads.)
The problen you have is the classic "Memory Leak".
This is caused by a programming error in an application that fails to free memory after it uses it.
This faulty application then allocates more memory for its next function, fails to free it, and so forth, until all memory is consumed.
If the application that causes this is critical, force Win98SE to use D: (The new 10GB HD) for virtual memory, and do not load too much on D: .
That only extends the time till the crash.
You can also close other unused programs, to give this faulty application more memory. (And thus gain more time, till the crash.)
There is a small chance that this is a spyware problem.
Regards, Chris

by frybrian

Poster rated this answer.
Today I rebooted the system and ran "system monitor" (345 Allocated, 140 Locked, and 153 Unused). I copied a 300Mb folder from Drive d:\ to Drive c:\ and the memory just disappeard as the files were being copied over. System monitor finnished at: 498 Allocated, 293 Locked!, and 1 (one) Unused. I will try the virtual memory swap to drive D. Thanks for all the info.

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