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Win95 error message - sometimes

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8 replies

by james_randy 1 view

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When booting, I SOMETIMES get the following error message:

>>>>>>>>>>

WINDOWS: Terminating thread due to a stack overflow problem. A VxD, possibly recently installed, has consumed too much stack space. Increase the setting of "MinSP" in SYSTEM.INI or remove recently installed VxD's. There are currently 4 SPs allocated. Press any key to continue.

<<<<<<<<<<

This has happened about 4-5 times over the last few months. When I first got the error, I changed the value of "MinSP" in my SYSTEM.INI from 4 to 6. I only get the error occasionally.

I built the machine about 6 months ago. Pentium III, 933 MHz, 128 MB Ram (1 DRAM stick), Asus CUV4X-E motherboard, ATI Rage 128 graphics card, 3Com NIC, two hard drives - one of which (D-Drive) is removable, CD-Rom drive, internal ZIP drive, 3-1/2" FDD, Windows 95(b).

I do load and unload software from time to time. And I do have this machind defined as a server on our LAN, but it's only accessed to write data to the removable HDD.
Thanks,

jr

8 replies

by saihib

Hit Start, Run, type in sysedit and hit enter. Open the System.ini file. In the section called [386enh] add this line:
MinSPs=4. Save the changes, exit and reboot. If MinSPs=4 doesn't work, change it to either 8, 12, or 16. I don't know what the limit is but it has to be increased in increments of 4. This setting allocates memory for device drivers.

by james_randy

I implemented your suggestion, and I haven't gotten the error since. However, it's only happened 4-5 times over the past 6 months, so time will tell. I didn't know about the increments of 4 rule, and that would explain why my setting it to 6 failed to work. Thanks for your input.

by guidos

Minsps means "Minimum spare stack pages", VXD usually is referring to a "Virtual device driver". Sometime increasing just the minsps statement isn't enough... Do you have a Config.sys file? If so, what's in it? Is there a statement that reads
STACKS=9,256 or something similar? If not, that could be the other half of your problem. Try adding that to you Config.sys, reboot, and see what happens. You may want to check to see how much memory you have in your machine because using the stacks statement also uses physical memory...not an extreme amount, but it does use it...if you need more help, be sure and let us know...

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