ARCHIVED: In Windows 95, 98, or Me, how do I tell the computer to use only a certain amount of the available RAM?

In Windows 95, 98, or Me, you can use the troubleshooting tool described below to determine whether some of the RAM in the computer is bad. Bad RAM can cause system crashes. On Windows computers with RAM parity checking enabled, the crashes will usually take the form of "Parity Error" messages. On computers not using parity checking, the errors will vary.

Windows 98 or Me

Windows 98 and Windows Me include a utility that allows you to limit RAM availability. To use that utility, follow the steps below:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.... In the "Open:" field, type msinfo32 and click OK.
2. From the Tools menu, select System Configuration Utility.
3. Click the Advanced button.
4. There will be a checkbox that says Limit RAM to _______ MB. The drop-down list for the blank space shows the amount of RAM you have installed as a grayed-out value. Click the down arrow to decrease the amount of RAM used.
5. Click OK twice, and click Yes when prompted to restart.
6. When the computer restarts, it will only use as much of the RAM as you specified.

Windows 95

To limit the amount of memory Windows 95 uses, edit the system.ini file using any text editor (e.g., Notepad). To use Notepad to edit this file, from the Start button, select Run.... In the dialog box, enter notepad system.ini.

In the "[386 enh]" section, add one line:

  MaxPhysPage=7FF

This will make Windows 95 use the lowermost 8MB of RAM only. To limit Windows 95 to the lowermost 16MB of RAM, use:

  MaxPhysPage=FFF

To limit Windows 95 to the lowermost 4MB of RAM, use:

  MaxPhysPage=3FF

For more information, see articles 134503 and 142546 in Microsoft's knowledge base.