This was a trick I learned a long time ago, but I didn't actually know it fixed the memory leaks associated with Windows 98.
There is something called Vcache. This is not your virtual memory or swap file, it is related to your RAM (not space on your harddrive). This is basically how W98 leaks memory.
The problem is, when Windows 95 and 98 were first designed, they were mostly meant for small desktop applications like Outlook Express to do e-mail with. They were designed for heavy high end gaming or digital video editting (because computers were more in their early development stages at that point).
I guess microsoft just thought it would be easier (and it is alot quicker) to access things from your RAM (on additional occasions of opening a program more than once), rather than read it from your harddrive again (which is slower).
And at that time, with 4,000 RPM harddrives, when you needed to access your virtual memory once all of your RAM has been used (due to the leak), high end programs certainly couldn't handle that.
I guess MS just thought since most peeps would log on, do their taxes with MS Word, look at a few pictures and shut dwon their PC until the next time they turn it on, they wouldn't run out of RAM.
Vcache is basically what W98 uses to what most people define as a memory leak. What you can do is, limit the Vcache. So, if you set a Vcache limit of 2MB, windows would still hold memory for programs that aren't actively used, but it would only hold 2MB worth of RAM (and a loss of 2MB for an entire computer session, now matter how many apps you open and close, is no big deal).
What you need to do is set a fixed limit for the Vcache. Both a minimum and maximum that is the same. The data is measured in KB, so 8192 for both a minimum and maximum would equal 8MB.
The higher you set your Vcache, you'll get better performance, but Windows will always eat up that much memory (so if I have 512, and set a vcache of 32MB, I will always have that 32 taken on top of all of the things that remain in your RAM constantly like video card drivers and system files - but this will still leave me with over 400 RAM, and no matter what I do, it won't leak more than 32MB).
Basically you do it like this, in your system.ini file there is a setting called vcache. There you'll want to put this
minfile cache for the minimum
maxfilecache for the maximum
Chunksize (I'll get into this next)
So for an 8MB limit, your area would look like this
[vcache]
minfilecache=8192
maxfilecache=8192
And now it is done. Now, about the chunksize, you'll want to set that to half your limit. This is basically how many bytes of data are run at a time when this cache is purged (since the leak is set a 8MB, if data accumulated in there that isn't being used, it must be deleted and returned to the memory pool, something W98 does not do without this fix).
The purging time takes a little while, but thankfully most RAM now days is really fast (from PC100 to 266 DDR being the norm). I set my chunksize to half my limit. If you set it to small, there are too many little tiny chunks that have to be filtered through. Each chunk must be taken one at a time (that is like if you have 1,000 links, and move them, each one of those links has to be moved, as opposed to moving one big file that might be around 1MB, as opposed to 1,000 small files a 1KB a piece; each file has to be filtered so it slows this down).
So I set mine to have so it is done in 2 cycles (if it is as big as the limit, it takes all of the information at once, which could could slow down the time it takes a little).
So my final product for setting an 8MB limit looks like this
[vcache]
minfilecache=8192
maxfilecache=8192
chunksize=4096
And that my friends, is that. There is a site here that has a program that will supposedly do this for you, so you don't have to go edit your system.ini file. I don't know if this program is still free though. The site may give info about memory leaks though.
http://www.outertechnologies.com/
So there is no reason to use XP anymore. 98 SE crashes on me about once a month. If you are doing something like playing a game or burning a CD, DON'T have 500 programs running in the background like virus scanners actively searching your harddrive - even XP with all of the resources it uses has its limit, OS are more likely to crash in general when you have alot of stuff loaded. Just be patient and strip unnecessary programs down to boast performance and loading times anyhow.
There is something called Vcache. This is not your virtual memory or swap file, it is related to your RAM (not space on your harddrive). This is basically how W98 leaks memory.
The problem is, when Windows 95 and 98 were first designed, they were mostly meant for small desktop applications like Outlook Express to do e-mail with. They were designed for heavy high end gaming or digital video editting (because computers were more in their early development stages at that point).
I guess microsoft just thought it would be easier (and it is alot quicker) to access things from your RAM (on additional occasions of opening a program more than once), rather than read it from your harddrive again (which is slower).
And at that time, with 4,000 RPM harddrives, when you needed to access your virtual memory once all of your RAM has been used (due to the leak), high end programs certainly couldn't handle that.
I guess MS just thought since most peeps would log on, do their taxes with MS Word, look at a few pictures and shut dwon their PC until the next time they turn it on, they wouldn't run out of RAM.
Vcache is basically what W98 uses to what most people define as a memory leak. What you can do is, limit the Vcache. So, if you set a Vcache limit of 2MB, windows would still hold memory for programs that aren't actively used, but it would only hold 2MB worth of RAM (and a loss of 2MB for an entire computer session, now matter how many apps you open and close, is no big deal).
What you need to do is set a fixed limit for the Vcache. Both a minimum and maximum that is the same. The data is measured in KB, so 8192 for both a minimum and maximum would equal 8MB.
The higher you set your Vcache, you'll get better performance, but Windows will always eat up that much memory (so if I have 512, and set a vcache of 32MB, I will always have that 32 taken on top of all of the things that remain in your RAM constantly like video card drivers and system files - but this will still leave me with over 400 RAM, and no matter what I do, it won't leak more than 32MB).
Basically you do it like this, in your system.ini file there is a setting called vcache. There you'll want to put this
minfile cache for the minimum
maxfilecache for the maximum
Chunksize (I'll get into this next)
So for an 8MB limit, your area would look like this
[vcache]
minfilecache=8192
maxfilecache=8192
And now it is done. Now, about the chunksize, you'll want to set that to half your limit. This is basically how many bytes of data are run at a time when this cache is purged (since the leak is set a 8MB, if data accumulated in there that isn't being used, it must be deleted and returned to the memory pool, something W98 does not do without this fix).
The purging time takes a little while, but thankfully most RAM now days is really fast (from PC100 to 266 DDR being the norm). I set my chunksize to half my limit. If you set it to small, there are too many little tiny chunks that have to be filtered through. Each chunk must be taken one at a time (that is like if you have 1,000 links, and move them, each one of those links has to be moved, as opposed to moving one big file that might be around 1MB, as opposed to 1,000 small files a 1KB a piece; each file has to be filtered so it slows this down).
So I set mine to have so it is done in 2 cycles (if it is as big as the limit, it takes all of the information at once, which could could slow down the time it takes a little).
So my final product for setting an 8MB limit looks like this
[vcache]
minfilecache=8192
maxfilecache=8192
chunksize=4096
And that my friends, is that. There is a site here that has a program that will supposedly do this for you, so you don't have to go edit your system.ini file. I don't know if this program is still free though. The site may give info about memory leaks though.
http://www.outertechnologies.com/
So there is no reason to use XP anymore. 98 SE crashes on me about once a month. If you are doing something like playing a game or burning a CD, DON'T have 500 programs running in the background like virus scanners actively searching your harddrive - even XP with all of the resources it uses has its limit, OS are more likely to crash in general when you have alot of stuff loaded. Just be patient and strip unnecessary programs down to boast performance and loading times anyhow.
