Memory Problem with Asus A7V133 MB 1

[faust13]

System Details:
A7V133 MB
AMD Athlon 1.333Ghz
Samsung PC133 512MB RAM
Diamond Stealth III PCI
WIN98 Second Edition
Award BIOS 1.05
VIA 4 in 1 Build 32

Problem:
I recently bought 3 DIMMs of Samsung PC133 512MB SDRAM.

I am able to install any one without any problems in any slot configuration.

When I install the second DIMM in any slot configuration, my system's display goes blank just before I am presented with the desktop environment.

When I install all 3 my system will load Windows, but just before I am presented with the desktop environment, I get an error "Insufficient Memory to load Windows. Please close a memory resident program or consider removing components from config.sys or autoexec.bat." ----------------------------------------
Is George Lucas Kidding...

 

[butchrecon]

Ok. I think you have some bad memory or memory slots. Do they ALL work ok individually? Also Win98 cannot CACHE (utilize at 1 time) more than 320meg-384meg of RAM at one time. Dont confuse this with seeing the RAM. Win 98 can see 2gig of RAM It just cant cache more than the above ammount. With more RAM you actually get decreased performance and in a lot of cases problems occure. James Collins
Systems Support Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[Guest_imported]

i have the same problem but i only have 64 megs of ram..but i have the same motherboard as he does..all i load is AIM, shockwave games....and they give me the "Insufficient Memory to load Windows. Please close a memory resident program or consider removing components from config.sys or autoexec.bat." all of that should work on 64 megs of ram right? or is it the motherboard....does the asus a7v133 have a rep. of doing this? i am on windows 2000 tho.

 

[JohnS9051]

I found this workaround while researching another memory problem and I immediately thought of you.
This is for Win98 and WinME. Does NOT apply to Win2000. Win95 and Win3.11 users see the MS Knowledge Base article below.
I'll do this step by step for the benefit of others who may have the same problem.

Insert only one of your 512MB modules and start Windows.
Go to Start-Run and type msconfig. Press ENTER
On the General tab click the < Advanced... > button.
Check the < Limit memory to > checkbox and set it to 512MB.
Click OK twice and reboot.
Shutdown the system.
Now you can install the other memory modules and you shouldn't have any problem.

If this solves the problem you may want to make a permanent entry in System.ini at the end of the [386enh] section and then uncheck the box in msconfig.
The entry is MaxPhysPage=1FFFF in your case.

This only limits the amount of memory used by Windows Vcache.
This doesn't limit the amount of memory that can be used by other applications.
For more info see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article below.

http://support.microsoft.com/suppor...ry=HWMEM&rnk=3&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=W98

Hope this helps. Good luck.

John

 

[faust13]

Okay I set my max RAM to 512 in msconfig. But I'm still having problems.

With all 1.5 GB RAM in, I got a weird display that looked like the monitor was out of sync, and the system did not respond to any input.

With 1GB of RAM, Windows reported it as only 512. And I had display problems (16 color 640x480).

Should I just install 512? Is this a problem with Win NT 4.0 or 2000?

Thanks everybody for you ideas and suggestions.

----------------------------------------
Is George Lucas Kidding...

 

[JohnS9051]

After researching this some more, including a call to Microsoft's Tech Support, I have to apologize to faust13, butchrecon, and everyone for giving misinformation.
It appears that Win98 and WinME machines are limited to 512MB of memory. This is due to a problem with the VCache, which is a 32bit disk caching utility similar to the old Smartdrive. WinNT 4.0, Win2000 and WinXP are not supposed to have this problem.
So according to Microsoft you should not install more than 512MB of memory if you are using Win98 or WinME. I think the article I referred you to was supposed to limit Win98 to 512MB as a solution to the error messages. This may also be for using a WinNT kernel based OS in a dual boot system with Win98. This doesn't appear to work either so you might want to try setting it to 384MB if you are using a dual boot system with WinNT 4.0, Win2000, WinXP, or Linux. The last option in the KB article says just to install 512MB of memory. This seems to be the only thing that works with Win98 and WinME.
You can limit the amount of memory used by VCache with the following settings under [VCache] in System.ini:
MinFileCache=xxxxx try 20480 20480x1024 = 20MB
MaxFileCache=xxxxx try 393216 393216x1024 = 384MB
ChunkSize=xxxxx try 1024 1024x1024 = 1MB
Where xxxxx is in KB
Microsoft seemed to think the above setting would not work and they surely did more testing than I did. I talked to a Tech Support person not an Engineer, so who knows.
If you try these setting let me know what you find.
A 256MB system uses the following when the VCache settings are unlimited:
Min = 10MB
Max = 243MB
Current Size = 39MB
So you can see Windows allocates almost all of the memory even though VCache doesn't use it.
I currently do not have a system with 512MB or more to do any testing on so you will have to test this yourself.
Butchrecon says the limit is 384MB. He is probably right although Microsoft says 512MB.

To butchrecon:
Where did you get that info? I was unable to find anything pertaining to a memory limit except for what Microsoft says. Please let me know where you got that info.
I'm sorry I doubted you.

If anyone is using a Win98 or WinME system with more than 512MB I would like to hear from you. If anyone has more information on this subject I would appreciate it if you could point me to the documentation.

I am offering my apologies, although, I feel Microsoft owes us all an apology for making another shoddy product and then not providing any solution or a clear explanation.

Thanks for the star anyway, I did my best given the information I had.:~/
Hope this clears thing up. Good luck.

John

 

[faust13]

Everybody And Escpecially John,

Thanks for the greate response. I've been running 512MB on both a Win98 and ME platforms respectively. But I need the additional memory for large query caching. So it looks like WinNT will be my only recourse.

Thanks again! ----------------------------------------
Is George Lucas Kidding...

 

[JohnS9051]

Microsoft's Tech Support representative did NOT say that WinNT 4.0, Win2000, or WinXP would definitely work with more than 512MB of memory. He just said that he could not find any documentation saying it would not work. So, unless someone else can offer a definitive answer you are on your own.
I'm glad if I helped. Good luck.

John