Windows 98SE Suddenly Won't Boot With 2GB RAM

[OldVeryOld]

This is the old "Windows 98SE won't run with 2 GB of RAM" problem. The usual solution offered on-line is an adjustment to system.ini under [vcache].

I did that, setting a minimum in the 50K range and a max in the 524K range.

Windows 98SE still won't boot with 2 GB of RAM after that change. THE GEEK SQUAD told me that in the olden days, they simply told people to upgrade to XP.

The Microsoft "expert" fix has already been stated above, and won't work with 2GB of RAM. I've already got a dual boot with 98SE and Windows XP. I am merely hoping to get 98SE to run from the dual boot without having to do anything radical, like re-installing 98SE and finding that it still won't work.

I can get to a C: prompt from the 98SE boot after it fails the first time and gives me the old, black screen "how'd you like to try to start Windows" menu.

Any assistance would be very much appreciated, and genuine gratitude would be evoked if such assistance were to actually solve this problem easily.

 

[jkl0]

I don't know if the motherboard or bios has any affect, but I ran into this problem this past weekend. After decreasing the RAM, 98SE was finally able to boot with 1 GIG.
This is just my experience. And also keep the Vcache setting that you changed to.

 

[Glenn9999]

Try replacing your memory manager. See

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/109...installed-ram-working-in-win98se/page__st__69

. Usually the thing with 98 is that it really wasn't set up to handle that much memory out of the box, so you have to get things set up so it will. Hope that link helps..

It is not possible for anyone to acknowledge truth when their salary depends on them not doing it.

 

[OldVeryOld]

Glen9999,

Thank you. I did what your referenced link prescribes in the first "I got it to work and this is how I did it!" assertion, but Windows 98SE behaves much as it did when I simply altered the VCACHE settings and booted normally.

It produces quite a few problems.

1. 98SE immediately (on booting) gives me an error notification and suggests that I change my selected graphics adapter. All of the screen icons are solid white silhouettes. I have no idea if they could be accessed, because of another problem (see point two below due to no mouse driver).

2. I just installed a Microsoft wheel mouse that I purchased at a local computer store, because my old mouse developed what appeared to be an intermittent short in the wire to the computer, and my USB card would detect it and shut down. The computer store rep said that this Microsoft wheel mouse (USB mouse) didn't need a driver. It works fine with XP, but Windows 98SE detects it when I plug it in again after booting (at least I think I've booted) to 98SE, and asks for a driver. It tells me to point to the driver. I have no driver, so I'm out of luck. I can't even pretend to use the mouse in the Windows 98SE screen.

So, I've got an unhappy video problem, and a "no mouse" problem. Any way out?

(You'd like to think there'd be a mouse driver for 98SE for this Microsoft wheel mouse, but Microsoft stopped support 98SE long ago. You'd like to think there'd be a memory setting tweak that would get my graphics adapter on the motherboard to work under 98SE, but I'm dealing with a memory limiting situation. Honestly, I'm not even sure that loading HimemX.exe via config.sys really did any good.)