Dos problem

[atifds9]

Hi all had an e-mail from a friend who is having a problem at work, was wondering if anyone could shed any light on it, not much info i'm afraid but here goes.

"I'm running our DOS accounts system under Win 98 and when I try and run it I get the following error,

'Error getting 140K memory for program.

Only 129K available'

Any ideas?????"

Not even sure what accounts software it is, but thanks for any info, pointers or suggestions.

[directhex]

windows 98 is based on dos, and subsequently is still tied to the 640k memory limit imposed by microsoft in the 80s.

the message is indicating that it needs 140k of a particular section of memory (called "conventional memory") to operate, and only has 129k free. typing "mem" into a command prompt will give a confirmation of this

the solution is.....

editing config.sys and autoexec.bat to try & find/eliminate unneccessary DOS device drivers to free up the extra 11k of conventional memory - things like doskey, dos mouse drivers, any TSRs that are non-essential

bear in mind playing with these 2 files can really screw an MS-DOS system up

[streetster]

if you're running win98, cant you edit the settings, so that you can give the program loads of memory for each thing, conventional, extended etc... its been a long time since i used win98 so i'm not 100% sure, but i'm pretty sure there is something that allows you to fiddle... there was in win3.1 lol

mark

[directhex]

you can fiddle the EMS and HIMEM allocations to programs, but 98 still relies on good old fashioned 640k of conventional memory, and any attempt to change allocation to an app will simply have no effect - it's more for limiting it to LESS than the maximum free, than above.