too much memory?? need advise!!

[stryk123]

i have a home built syst w/a 1700 processor. the mother board has 3 memory slots which i have a stick of ddr 2100/256 & 512. i am running window me. i recently tried to add another stick of 256 &/or 512 but no matter what arrangement i tried, when i got over 1 gig i would recieve errors immediately after booting up. some one told me that he thought that windows me, 98 and 2000 i think had something in the programing which would only allow 1 gig max and maybe i could reconfigure the bios. has anyone else ever heard this and do you advise reconfiguring the bios? let me know. s.g.stryker@verizon.net

[Jeanluc]

I know there some issues with me, 98 and more than 512 mB

I went to microsoft.com and it says so there.
Go to the support area and look for any documents about that, it said something about changing cahche page size, things i don't understand.
HOPE it helps.
But what i will do is remove the 256 memory stick and see if it happens the same thing.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Upgrade to win 2k or XP - you should be okay, but for now drop down to 512 - win 98 / Me/ 95 go a lil bit dizzy above that apparently

--Jakk

[dave-harper]

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q253912

[kazuza]

One that adds or changes it's memory size, should ALWAYS configure his swap file accordingly!
< 128MB RAM > swap=2xRAM
> 128MB RAM > swap=1.5xRAM
Hope that clears your doubts!

[Tweb]

If you have 512 or more of memroy try this...

Click start > Run > Type msconfig > Hit Enter > Click the Advance button > Scroll down to were you see Limit memory to an set it to 512 mb > Click OK - Then Apply - Then OK > Reboot.

You should have "gulp" no more problems....

As for the swap file I say let windows manage it, I have 512 megs of ram an only 1 game uses a SMALL swap file an that's Falcon 4.
After monitoring my swap file ALL DAY my swap file use was "0". Falon 4 rarely used any swap file an then on only one mod that I DL an isn't standard with the game.

My other games, Tribes2 an MS Combat FS 1 & 2 that need lots of memory to run FULL BLAST didn't use any swap file.

[Midknyte]

Even if you get the system work without errors, i don't think you'll see a significant performance increase. Win Me doesn't manage memory as well as 2000 or XP. If you really want to take advantage of your new ram, it would be wise to upgrade.

[fasttoon]

Sounds like you need to upgrade something, might as well upgrade everything including your os as well.

WinME should be able to take 2gb ram but some programs/hardware will not work well with over 1gb of ram so you need to remove ram to bring it under that figure, or you need to get into sys.ini and change the vcache, oops thats for win95/98 maybe it'll work for winME you can try and see.

[Johnny Fist]

Does your motherboard support over 1Gb of ram? Also, you may want to look and see if one of those slots is for sdram instead of ddr ram. Sticking the wrong type of ram in the wrong slot is going to give you some problems, too. Another thing to try taking out one of your current sticks and putting the one you want to add in without adding the one you just took out. Maybe its just the ram. Don't panic and upgrade or buy a new OS before you look at the basics first.

[texas2step]

Win Me will not run right over 512, drop back to 512 or less

microsoft has all instructions about this, but also note limit cache as described above is import with 512 mb ram

and you can't "upgrade" to 2000, it came out after ME and is considered a downgrade. you can only go to xp from ME. unless you do a complete re-install and go to 2000.

went through all this when I upgraded a couple of months ago

ME is not capable of operating at more than 512 mg of ram for some unknown reason, anyway your ram is wasted with Me but a complete overhaul to 2000 or xp might make a difference.

Texas2Step

[dave-harper]

(home)==win 3.11--95--98/se--ME--\
---------------------------------------------------win XP ( home & business )
(business)==NT 3.51/4.0--win 2000--/

they were "supposed" to combine back in 2000
not bad only 2 years behind schedule
microsoft.com/windowsxp/howtobuy/upgrading

[Johnny Fist]

What in the hell are you talking about, Dave?

[sauton]

I had exactly this problem when I used to run Win ME - there is a solution.

You need to edit your system.ini file. On my system (running a total of 768MB RAM) I deleted the line for MinFileCache, set MaxFileCache=524288, set MaxPhysPage=30000 and ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1.

For a more in-depth explanation of why this works go to

http://www.aumha.org/a/memmgmt.htm

Good luck - Stuart.

[Logan2002]

ok lets say i put a gig or ram in my system what benfits would i get?

Could I turn of the virtual memory which i knows the hdd space as ram,.

i mean would that be faster?

[sauton]

It depends on:

a) which OS you're using - Win9x doesn't really know what to do above 512MB despite being able to address upto 2GB; Win NT/XP can make much more use of it.

b) what you use your PC for (i.e. are your apps memory intensive).

I'd be inclined to leave virtual memory settings alone - its best to let Windows manage memory itself - link in my previous post to this query refers.

Stuart.