View Full Version : Windows 98 wont boot with 768mb of ram!
grrrrrr
i just bought 3 sticks of crucial pc133 cas2 ram and windows wont even boot when i have all 3 sticks in. :mad: i finally got it to boot but then it started to install all my hardware again cuz it said it was new, lol. then it said my radeon was a rage fury pro, and it said my sound card was a soundblaster16, lol.
i thought the 3rd stick was just bad but i put it in alone and everything worked fine.
why cant i have my 768mb of ram?
Win98 normally has problems with anything more than 512MB.
There really is no point in that much since Win98 has absolutely no means to utilize anything over 512MB anyway.
kevin_bouchard
11-16-01, 01:30 AM
2 words, go winxp (that is of course if you have the money) its a great os and it supports up to something like 4gig of ram so i cant see 768mb of ram being a problem, but there is a setting that will help you use 768mb of ram but i dont remember it, maybe someone here know it(i will post it if i can find it. I know it has something to do with manually telling win98 how much ram you have.
i dont think this was much help but its all i could do:(
Blackearth
11-16-01, 07:48 AM
i seem to recall win98 not supporting anything over 512...forget 98, if you have access to win2k or xp go for it. . .
Does anyone have info that confirms that XP can utilize 4 gigs of RAM? With RAM so cheap this is something I would consider.
This was discussed a LONG time ago, Win98 cnnot support anything of 512 because it cant address more than that or something, Shadow and a few other guys went on a mission to figur this out and this is what we came up with, I will serach for the post, but this was back in the old forum so it may not be there.
::EDIT:: no its not there sorry, maybe shadow remembers this and will be along shortly...
RedDeathDrinker
11-16-01, 12:37 PM
Originally posted by martyt
Does anyone have info that confirms that XP can utilize 4 gigs of RAM? With RAM so cheap this is something I would consider.
Yes. XP will support up to 4gigs. Motherboard dependant.
MS have a 64 bit version of XP available that will take up to 16gigs +
kevin_bouchard
11-16-01, 04:47 PM
16gigs:eek: , sorry for the false information, but does any desktop mobo support that much ram? And what would use that much ram?
thanks
Intel Itanium motherboards can use that much, they have like 4 ram slots and each can have a 4gb stick in it.
Its used so internet servers can load everything into memory so it never has to access the hard drive (only to save important stuff) so it would increase speed.
you wouldnt really want anything over 2gb on a normal processor though, cuz it would slow the computer down a ton because the cpus cashe is too small to utilize that much ram, if you wanna use that much ram get like a p3 xeon that has 2mb of cahe :p
Windows 98 itself will only use 256MB but it can support 512MB
you can use more than 512 in 98 but you have to set refresh and buffer rates along with other things to get it to work
not worth the time
Upgrade to Windows 2K.. The Windows 98 won't utilize your 768 ram.. Only 512 .. But then again it won't run it at 512 ram it'll run it as 256... Win 9x = Bad memory management.
Silversinksam
11-17-01, 03:49 AM
Maybe your OS wont utilize more than 512 megs but the P3v4x can run 2 gigs......Its a toss up here........upgrade the OS to utilize the ram you bought or just use 512 with 98
:p
Miss winnie
11-17-01, 05:55 AM
Is there ANY way to upgrade to windows XP without having to format the whole harddisk?
Originally posted by Miss winnie
Is there ANY way to upgrade to windows XP without having to format the whole harddisk?
Yes thats why they have a upgrade option..
For Windows 98 or Windows 2K.
If you want to keep the data on your hard drive but do a clean Windows XP installation it is possible with a bit of work. After doing this you will need to reinstall your applications, but in most instances the data will be preserved from your Win9x setup. That is why I like to do it this way. I don't have to backup and reinstall all the data. I make a list of the appications that I feel are essential and then make sure I reinstall them when the new OS is up and running.
I tried to go the upgrade route for a week or so and finally gave up. During upgrade my settings couldn't be brought over to XP. I tried this every which way and was not able to get all the settings over. (I had a cloned version of my WinME hard drive and was able to go back and forth without fear of losing data.)
When the settings wouldn't come over automatically in the upgrade I tried the program in XP that allows you to copy your settings and documents from an old machine. My old machine was my cloned hard drive. This still wouldn't work. I think the reason it wouldn't work had to do with my wife using Outlook Express at the same time that I was using Outlook 98. XP seemed to have a hard time with that. In fact even after I did the full install I will outline below, I still couldn't configure OE and O'98 to run on XP with the settings that we wanted.
So what I did to install without doing a hard drive format was to wipe out all the "c:\documents and setttings" folders that were created during my XP install attempts and all my "c:\windows" files and folders and all the files in the "c:\" root drive location.
I booted to the c prompt, made sure that I could access my CD Rom drive to install XP and then I did a deltree on all the above listed areas. Deleting this way takes a long time but I felt it was worth it.
The sticky part about installing from this point is that the setup program that is easy to find on the CD will not work from a DOS prompt. To do the install from the DOS prompt you need to navigate to the i386 dir on your xp cd and run "winnt.exe".
uhh yes but sam rember dimm3 on that p3v4x i bought from you doesnt work :p
thats why i only got 3 sticks of ram from crucial instead of 4 :p
oh well, i couldnt use it anyway until i fork over $200 to microsoft :mad:
Originally posted by BigRed
uhh yes but sam rember dimm3 on that p3v4x i bought from you doesnt work :p
thats why i only got 3 sticks of ram from crucial instead of 4 :p
oh well, i couldnt use it anyway until i fork over $200 to microsoft :mad:
You can.. Send it to me!
You can.. Send it to me!
funny :p
you can use more than 512 in 98 but you have to set refresh and buffer rates along with other things to get it to work
not worth the time
im bored :p how do you do this?, its making me depressed seeing the stick of ram i cant use sitting here. i dont care if windoze :p wont use it, i just want it in the computer heh
my dad was the one who showed me how to do it
it looked pretty complicated, and in the end still was not worth it, no performance gain
just a hacked up registry and config.sys files among many other things
but i'll try to get him to make a text file with directions and i will send it too you if i get it
Win 98 will work with 768 megs of ram,so Will Win Me.
I guy hit it on the head it is addresing issues that prevent the system from useing more than 512.However if you reduce the amount of addresses available to the O/S you naturally will free them up for the physical ram..
Go to windows update site and search for 512 megs of ram,for win 98 it will then tell you how to work around the 512 limit.I always ran 768 megs on the 9x platforms,,
Miss winnie
11-17-01, 07:40 PM
But my friend has problems with windows XP.. Some of the applications worked for his windows 98 but they don't work for Windows Xp.. Why is that?
kevin_bouchard
11-17-01, 08:23 PM
Miss winnie, the reason why some programs wont run in winxp and they will in win98 is because not all programs that are compatible with win98 are with compatible with winxp. you can try the built in compatability function in winxp, to do this right click the file>>properties>>compatibility and then check "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" and then change windows 95 to windows 98 and click ok.
Hope this helps
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