Microsoft Support: "Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM Installed And to force Win 98 SE or Me to use your RAM before using the swap file (very useful when you have more than 256 MB RAM):
From
AXCEL216's windows tricks and secretsThe 12-29-99 Win98/ME ŠTrick in TIPS98.TXT, part of W95-11D.EXE:
CONSERVATIVE SWAP
This Win98/ME (all releases) tip was unearthed thanks to Paul (paulandcathy@earthlink.net).
"I found this thread at the Windows 98 Annoyances Forum. I've applied the tweak, but too soon to tell if it causes any problems. Does seem to add a performance boost:"
Q [Horst Mueller]:
"Having trouble with Win98 swap file, sometimes it indicates 50 MB then it will soar to over 100, giving me false readings on available disk space. I have 128 MB RAM. I have reinstalled Win98, all programs and all Win98 updates which takes me about 12 hours each time."
A [Dan A. Wilson]:
"I've suggested this several times here before, and I use it and swear by it as a tweak for both speeding up Win98 and controlling the outlandish sizes of swapfiles when you have a ton of available hard memory (128 MB).
Quoted from this MSKB article:
Windows 98 added a new feature, PageFile_Call_Async_Manager, that allows the Memory Manager to asynchronously write out page file (swap file) buffers during periods of time when VFAT file system activity is not busy...
You can disable this feature, causing the system to behave as Windows 95 does, at some cost in overall system performance. Add the following entry to the SYSTEM.INI file under its [386Enh] section:
[386Enh]
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
The "cost in overall system performance" never came up on mine. Things just got better all around.
This tweak will force the notoriously bad Win98 Memory Manager to use your available chip memory for its functions first, and all uses of chip memory are *much faster* than any use of read-write HD file memory.
It's worth a try.
My Win98 computer purrs with this tweak, and is much faster than it was without it, and the swap file, which used to never be less than 40 MB and was often over 100 MB is now almost always zero or nearly zero.
After you add the new line, save SYSTEM.INI and reboot.
If there's any reduction in performance or any problem, just edit SYSTEM.INI again to remove the line, save the file and reboot...
The ridiculous Memory (mis-)Manager is now USING your 128 MB of RAM, instead of roaring off to the HD swapfile every time 40% of your available memory has been tapped, and the result is that your swapfile now sits at zero most of the time, while your hard memory is serving all of your needs. If, in fact, you ever push your memory to about 85% usage, a swap file of 10 to 15 MB may be created, but it will disappear when you close down the (30 memory-hungry) things you're running at once and shut down the machine. The next time you boot up, there will be a zero swap file.
If you ever configure a Win98 computer that has 64 MB of RAM or less, this fix probably won't work. It depends on a massive quantity of available memory to work."
CONCLUSION:
Try the ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 tweak on your computer and use the built-in Win9x/ME System Monitor (%windir%\SYSMON.EXE) tool to keep track of free/used resources (add the Disk Cache and Memory Manager items to the monitor window), enable logging (click File -> Start logging... -> choose a path for Sysmon.log -> click Save), and then run a few apps/games you know are RAM/disk intensive.
Repeat these steps, this time using the ConservativeSwapfileUsage=0 setting.
Then open Sysmon.log in Notepad and look for differences. If there are any, keep the SYSTEM.INI line that brings the most performance boost to your machine.
