Win 98 swap, cache & ram settings ?

[Admiral]

swap:

Most of the guides I've read say do a permanent one of 1.5 X "ram amount" or let Windows manage
its own. Some say do a semi permanent one.
Best behaiviour I've got was letting Windows manage it, yet I can't go with this since the hard disk gets
constantly filled with movies or mp3s and the rate with which it gets filled surpasses the rate with which those files get
burned, I might get to the point where I won't have a swap file (got to thank my bro for this).
Permanent one. Following the rule of thumb it should get to 576 for my 384 ram. Done that and though it's large enough and
the highest swap usage was around 375 some games don't like it fixed.
Semi permanent, the best compromise, have a mimimum value to know that I do have a swap file and a max value. SInce I already
had it set to 576 and defraged the hdd, I let that as the minimum value and set 768 as max.
Everything runs smooth though I might try for 384 min and 576 max to save some space.

cache & ram:

Recommendations, 1/8 min 1/4 max or fixed at 25% (1/4) amount of ram and chunk size of 512 or 1024.
It's doing well with 48mb min and 96mb max and a chunk size of 512. It does leave me with only 265 free ram at startup
While playing a game (and today's games get more demanding)
that amount gets down to around 150mb in most cases and if the amount gets under 100mb the game
starts to get choppy.

Maybe I should add another stick of 128mb and take the ram to 512 ? It's rather cheap, though with the aim of transition to
DDR I'm a bit reluctant to spend on SDRAM.
I'm thinking of better optimizing the ram I have. I'm currently using Cacheman 5.11 to do so. The memory recovery feature
on it ain't that good though. If I check the "Do not recover on high CPU usage" and "Do not recover on high disk activity"
tabs it runs out of ram and crashes before recovering. If I uncheck them, it crasehs while recovering memory.

Any tips on some ram management tools or settings would be appreciated (and I'm not referring to use Windows XP ).

[Marshmallowman]

1.5 or whatever is BS.

set it as small as you can, usually you want AT LEAST 256 m in total mem (virtual plus real)
more realistic is 512, if you play newer games etc...

If you get low on resources/memory errors then increase it.

manageing virtual memory takes up resources, so the less you can get away with the better...but if you NEED it use it!.

I find a permanent swap space is always best, as it stops fragmentation of your harddrive and avoids the overheads of resizeing the swap space.

there are setting to minimise swap usage which are supposed to be good, but I have never used them or alternative memory managers in win 98, mind you I have not used win98 for a few years.

[UtwigMU]

I had no experience with fixed swap file under 98 but I use that strictly for gaming and 512MB of RAM is enough for most games. I also wouldn't put optimizing software on 98 since it cannot handle multitasking as well as NT.
Also note that 98 cannot handle more than 512MB RAM without limitations.

Also make sure you are running 98 second edition since besides 95OSR2 all other 9x based OS's suck.

I suggest running Memtest86 first (google it up) to make sure your RAM is OK. Are you overclocking. If so make sure your PCI bus is run in specs = @33MHz since if it's not data on your HDDs might get corrupt.

When I talked about virtual memory with Windows (MCSE) and Linux (RHCE) experts they both suggested that the most professional solution is putting virtual memory on separate partition or even dedicated fast (as speedy not fast SCSI) SCSI drive.

In NTs I have a permanent swap file of 523MB and I'm using pagedefrag (System files defragmenter from Sysinternals) - freeware - that defrags pagefile and registry on bootup. I am also using Executive Software Diskeeper that has boot up defrag option that defragments system files and optimizes directories on bootup.

If 98 is a must I suggest keeping permanent swap that gets defragged (Win98 defragmenter is not very good IMO) often or dedicated swap partition.

NT based Windows (NT4.0, 5.0 aka 2000 and 5.1 aka XP) are a lot better when managing system resources than 9x based (95, 98, Me)

I suggest dual booting with NT based windows. Here's my setup (HDD is my next upgrade due soon):

C: primary partition FAT = 1.5GB
/This will move to 5GB FAT32 still runing 98SE/
NT Boot loader + Windows98SE + General utils (ACDsee, Quicktime, RealPlayer) + 900MB space for games. Since installing and uninstalling games is rather quick this is enough to handle 1-3 games.

When the registry gets fuxored I just reimage the drive to Windows + Drivers + Utils install state from CD-ROMs Instead of hours reinstalling takes 5 minutes.


D: logical partition in extended partition NTFS = 6.5GB
/This will move to 5GB NTFS and Win2k SP3/
Windows NT 4.0 (they are lean and mean and stable and they do what I expect them to do) + drivers + utils + CD-Burning (after switching to NTs I made about 2 coasters in 2 years which were PEBCAKs and I'm photoshopping while burning on the fly, my Writer has no Burnproof) + Software + permanent swap (which is in 1 fragment due to the utils mentioned before) Again I can reimage install state of this drive in 20 minutes (instead of installing for days) if something goes bad) I keep storage on this drive for now but this will move to see bellow ...

E: storage NTFS = the rest of the drive
/This is planned for the near future HDD upgrade/
This get's backed up to CD-ROMs. If I have to reimage 98 or NTs (2k) for some reason this partition remains intact and I don't have to back up entire drive when Windows goes nuts.


Switching to XPs: In my opinion it's 2k> NT4.0> XP. I haven't played with service pack 1 for XP so they might have gotten over their childhood problems. I realy don't know why one would use 9x except for special apps, hardware (Rage Fury MAXX), or legacy games, gaming alone and beta testing.

Also some people *cough Gurm cough* will tell you about NT based boxes running for years without reboot or BSOD.

Also with multibooting you can reboot and imidiately see if it's a driver or a hardware problem. It has saved my butt when Corel Draw got fuxored under NTs 4 hours before deadline. Also your bro won't be tampering with your working/burning OS when playing games under 98.