EMS Memory

[Terror]

Hey, Nyar... i'm trying to run a game called Betrayal at Krondor. and while i tried many solutions, i still have to problem of unsufficient memory, EMS (or XMS, i believe it was EMS though) memory that is. Do you perhaps know how i can free enough (i need 590k i believe), and or is there something not workin? like emm386.exe or something.. cuz i realy wanna play that game badly now... (when it finally runs i'll probably get bored within 5 min. and stop cuz it's so old.. :) but still, i wanna make it work!

[Cyborg]

EMS is what I like to call dos memory. While EMS games work god in dos, they don't in windows. If you have windows 2000 or xp as your OS, I don'r really know what to do, but if you have 512MB RAM(as I have) you will be able to run the games(maybe it work with 256mb aswell).

There should be some feature in win98 that free ems memory when you play dos based games(you have to switch this on manually, though). Right click on the exe file and go into properties and see what you can find.

[Terror]

yeah i got 512 mb, and i tried about every possible thing (i even pulled my hair out) and nothing worked

[Andrew]

I still beleive that the VDMS should work. becuase nothing worked for me, but VDMS did.

Did you try closing most applications in bottom right corner? maybe they are using up some memory.

[Terror]

no, i tried vdms about a million times, and strangely enough my pc is still not bored in teasing me.

[number6]

Are you running Windows XP? I am not sure for XP, but on Windows 98 you have to exit from windows to play those old DOS games. I believe you need an entry in your config.sys file for emm386.exe, something like this:

device=c:windowshimem.sys

device=c:windowsemm386.exe

dos=high,umb

And then get the Windows boot menu to come up. You do that by pressing the F8 key when you power up your computer. You would pick "Command line only" from the menu and you should come up to the DOS prompt. You can check how much EMS/XMS memory you have from the DOS prompt by typing "mem". I don't think you can do it this way under XP, maybe that's what the DOS compatability thing is supposed to do.

I am sure doc Nyar can answer for Windows XP.

Here is an article from MS if you need to increase conventional memory:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;134399

Here is an article from MS on how to troubleshoot EMS related problems (Did not see your problem listed though):

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;78557

[Andrew]

Number6

I was able to play all dos games in windows.(except scerwed up games that crashed the whole OS)

I never had to shut windows down and start in dos mode. But our computers differ, so it would depend on computer.

Andrew

[number6]

You don't need to for all DOS games, but ones that use EMS generally needed to be run from the DOS prompt with Windows not running. I don't know what you mean by "except scerwed up games that crashed the whole OS", but if you run from DOS only that may not happen. :) Windows is still managing memory and some of the older DOS games don't like that.

[Nyarlathotep]

Are you running Windows XP? I am not sure for XP, but on Windows 98 you have to exit from windows to play those old DOS games. I believe you need an entry in your config.sys file for emm386.exe, something like this:

device=c:windowshimem.sys

device=c:windowsemm386.exe

dos=high,umb

And then get the Windows boot menu to come up. You do that by pressing the F8 key when you power up your computer. You would pick "Command line only" from the menu and you should come up to the DOS prompt. You can check how much EMS/XMS memory you have from the DOS prompt by typing "mem". I don't think you can do it this way under XP, maybe that's what the DOS compatability thing is supposed to do.

I am sure doc Nyar can answer for Windows XP.

Here is an article from MS if you need to increase conventional memory:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;134399

Here is an article from MS on how to troubleshoot EMS related problems (Did not see your problem listed though):

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;78557

You basicly coverd all for Win 98, nothing to add from my side Sherlock. As for XP, I doubt it'll work. XP doesn't use DOS anymore and I even doubt a config.sys still exists.

What Cyborg stated about right clicking the file and then selecting properties might be a solution.

[Andrew]

but i have XP on new computer and it works....maybe i will zip my BAK and send it to him...but in order for it to work i have to use VDMS.(in order to make game work)

[Terror]

ok thanks for the help, not that it helped :)

I knew the win98 part, i used it dozens of times myself

and for XP, they say it's more friendly to dos games than win98 even. Anyway, yes many dos games should run on XP, especially with the help of VDMS. However... I need to free up more EMS memory, and the point is that i don't know how much i have free now, and there's no command prompt so i can't check it (you know, with mem. commands and stuff)

[number6]

I seriously doubt that XP is more friendly to DOS games than Win 98. Windows 98 is built on top of DOS and can run in DOS mode. A lot of the older games, like the one you are trying to run, probably took advantage of undocumented features of DOS to increase performance. I guess XP is using some form of DOS emulation. My solution to DOS games has been to keep my old 486 computer with the last version of straight DOS (6.22) and play the games the way they were meant to played. Of course I know very little about XP, so I could be totally wrong. I think XP would be less stable if they tried to continue supporting DOS games within a multi-threaded OS. Andrew, I am not saying that I don't believe you, but is it possible you are running a updated version of the same DOS game? I know some people tried running the DOS version of Warcraft II on Windows systems and though the game would run it was unplayable due to the window scrolling way too fast. Blizzard came out with a windows version of Warcraft II that made it playable on modern systems. I wish other developers would do this.

Sorry about not being able to help Flameweaver. I guess I need to start thinking about upgrading to XP so that I can catch up with the rest of you. I just have not had a reason to upgrade yet.

[Nyarlathotep]

Have you tried the compatibility mode ? If that doesn't help, you can always try the following:

1. Make one of your partitions FAT32 (if you don't have one already)

2. Copy all your DOS games there

3. Boot your PC with a Win9x bootdisk (remember to get the sound card dos drivers etc in the config.sys + autoexec.bat)

Then try to see if the games work (they should if they'd run under Win 98).

[Terror]

1. it's just so i heard... that winxp was strangely enough kinda good with dos games, due to emulation programs.

2. yes i have tried compatibility mode... and i know that's not the problem at all.. the program will run... as long as i have my EMS memory... so what i need is..... EMS memory. i believe standard EMS for a comp is 640k, and BAK needs 590 of that... well by reading through all those help sites i came to the following conclusion, i must keep trying, there are more ppl with the same problem. Perhaps kicking against my comp will work... i'll try that, it seems to work for russians

[number6]

If I remember DOS correctly EMS memory is referenced from High DOS memory in 64K blocks. I believe the default size is actually 1024K if you have suffiecient memory on your system (which you should). It just sounds like XP is not providing EMS memory for that game. Maybe you don't have the correct High DOS memory addresses free that EMS uses by default. I know a lot of the device drivers for hardware use what used to be High Dos memory for addressing the devices.

[Terror]

no, i checked it in the past, and double checked it online... default is 640 k

[Gobalopper]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,427215,00.asp

This might help.

[number6]

Typical of Microsoft to have tools, but not tell anyone about them. The QFixApp seems like it should help with this problem. I have bookmarked the link. Thanks Gob.

[zamboe]

How about the DOS command "memmaker" ?

I don't really remember if that was still incorporated in W98, but it was in W95 and it was a powerfull tool to control and distribute/free EMS memory.

[Andrew]

to clarify.. i beleive that flameweaver has WinXP. but any help is appreciated.( directed towards zamboe in case he thought flameweaver had win98)

[Terror]

ooops, kinda stupid i never posted i had xp :)

anyway, thank you for all the help.. i will try everything until it works or i die