Limiting system memory?

[Comage]

Hi guys, I was wondering if anybody knows of any means to limit the amount of physical memory that the system sees.

I'm trying to get an old game to work (Might and Magic 6: The Mandate of Heaven). It runs good on a rig with 512MB of RAM, but fails to execute even on another rig with 1GB of RAM.

[MadPistol]

Do you know for certain that it's the system ram?

If not, it could be a host of factors as to why the game will run on your rig and not others. I have several games like that too that will no longer run on my current rig (for some odd reason). if that game has a website, check around online and see if anyone else is having your same problem.

[apocalypse]

If you are using Windows XP, this will work for you.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;833721
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/108393/

The boot.ini file will look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00 [VGA mode]" /basevideo /sos
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

The three lines in the "[operating systems]" section are the three choices you have at bootup. Create an extra option with the "/maxmem" parameter.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00" /maxmem:8

This means 8MB of memory. Adding this line to the boot.ini file will give you an option at bootup that restricts Windows XP to using only the lower 8MB of RAM.

[Comage]

Hi apocalypse! Your link worked, but it seems that MadPistol was correct: it's not the RAM that's the problem.

I'm baffled by it too, since both machines are running Windows XP Pro. The only difference between the two machines is that one has 512MB coupled with a P3-700MHz processor (this is the machine that the game runs fine), and the other one is a P4-2.8GHz w/ 1GB of RAM (this is the one that doesn't work).

I tried disabling Hyper-Threading in BIOS too, but it didn't help. Both machines have DirectX 9.0c installed as well.

[MadPistol]

well, my first thought is that there is a process in the background interfering with the program. if you have the computers running, I would check and see if there is a process running on the 2.8Ghz machine that isn't running on the P3 700Mhz machine. if you find a process that isn't a system critical process, get rid of it and see if that fixes your problem.

[apocalypse]

I believe that Might and Magic VI came out in 1998, and it may very well not like Windows XP so much.

One thing to try is to right-click on the shortcut that starts the game and on the "Compatibility" tab, run it in "Windows 98/ME" mode and see if that makes a difference.

If that still doesn't work, try to run the game in "Safe Mode".

Post back your results!