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Win98 SE and ram above 64MB

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by femakahuna

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I recently heard Win98 SE has a problem recognizing ram above 64MB. On the system properties General Tab it says my system has 128MB of ram which is correct. Is Windows using all my ram? Do I still need to add the line conservativeswapfileusage=1 tothe system.ini file? Does changing the system.ini file change performance of some other area? Thanks for any help.

10 replies

by dmiles

You have 128m of memory and the computer is performing okay then donot change anything
It would be difficult to give an answer on how the machine is performing when you did not provide enough info about what has you thinking that system resources are a problem

by thechas

Some motherboards have problems with extra memory.

Windows 9X has documented problems with greater than 511MB of RAM.

There is a debate as to how effective W9X utilizes extra RAM.

Systems seem to have optimum performance at around 196MB of ram in W98SE.

Some of the information about optimizing the system is holdovers from windows 3.11, and just doesn't apply to W98.

Leave the sys.ini file alone, and do not set a maximum size for the swap file.

by guy west

I just put another 128MB into a new DellGX50 running Win98SE that came with 256MB for a total of 384MB. This machine is used for a lot graphics and there was a dramatic boost in performance.

by femakahuna

This was a topic discussed by David Lawrence on his radio show several days ago but I didn't hear the complete discussion. The only microsoft KB number refering to the change in system.ini file for this problem is Q223294.

by thechas

As to how to fix the W98 memory limit;
Since the problem is in the W98 code, the best option is to upgrade to XP.

As to further articles on memory limits and W98;
Q184447
Q253912
Both discuss a work around for boot problems with 512MB and 1Gbof ram installed.

As you will see from the articles, there is general confusion as to what the actual limit of system RAM will function with W98.
From what I've seen, it is very dependant on the system configuration, chipset used, and the BIOS code.

I use 128MB as a minimum for my W98 boxes.
I have 384MB in my personal W98 machine.
I set up one machine with 196MB, and it does run faster than the machine with 384MB.

The only time I have seen memory problems is when I have installed 2different mfg. DIMMs that did not get along with each other.

Chas

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