not enough physical memory

hi.

i have a 98 machine here that tells me it doesn't have
enough free physical memory to do either scandisk or
defrag.

it has 64mb ram installed.

i end task all the programs from task manager (except
Explorer obviously) and it still doesnt work.

i even tried it in safe mode and i get the same message.
it used to work.

any ideas?

Try it in DOS. Also, empty your Temporary Internet files, including offline
files. Nuke your cookies, too.

Alias

"james" wrote

hi.

i have a 98 machine here that tells me it doesn't have
enough free physical memory to do either scandisk or
defrag.

it has 64mb ram installed.

i end task all the programs from task manager (except
Explorer obviously) and it still doesnt work.

i even tried it in safe mode and i get the same message.
it used to work.

any ideas?

That message doesn't usually apply to the amount of RAM,
it applies to the amount of free space on the drive that
you're running the utilities on.

Open My Computer and right click on the C: drive followed
by left-clicking on Properties. The pie chart shows you
how much free space is available.

Use the Disk Cleanup option there to free up space.

Also remember that the Recycle Bin and Internet Explorer
reserve space that doesn't figure in the chart, so do a
right click on the Bin, click properties and set the limit
to say 4% or less of the drive. Open Internet Options in
the Control Panel, and set the Temporary Internet Files
cache under General tab = Settings to about 20MB and
clean out the cache regularly, because you won't be able
to browse if the cache limit is reached.

Eric,
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/
http://www.sharedbirthday.co.uk/


Eric,
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/
http://www.sharedbirthday.co.uk/


-----Original Message-----
hi.

i have a 98 machine here that tells me it doesn't have
enough free physical memory to do either scandisk or
defrag.

it has 64mb ram installed.

i end task all the programs from task manager (except
Explorer obviously) and it still doesnt work.

i even tried it in safe mode and i get the same message.
it used to work.

any ideas?
.

"james" wrote:

hi.

i have a 98 machine here that tells me it doesn't have
enough free physical memory to do either scandisk or
defrag.

it has 64mb ram installed.

i end task all the programs from task manager (except
Explorer obviously) and it still doesnt work.

i even tried it in safe mode and i get the same message.
it used to work.

any ideas?

How big is your hard drive?

Did you recently install a new, larger hard drive and have the data
from the old drive transferred to it?

This type of error message from scandisk and defrag (the words "free
memory" are the critical clue) will be produced if the hard drive has
been created with more than 4.1 million total clusters.

If you transfer data from an old hard drive to a new larger one then
very often the new drive ends up with the same cluster size as the old
drive. So if, for example, you previously had an 8 gb hard drive
using 4K clusters and you transferred everything to a new 40 gb drive
then the new drive might also end up with a 4K cluster size resulting
in a total of 10 million clusters on the drive. Scandisk and defrag
cannot cope with that many totaly clusters.

To check to see if this is the actual cause of your problem open and
MS-DOS window and enter the following command:

CHKDSK C:

The resulting report will include a figure for the "total allocation
units on the drive" Allocation unit is Microsoftese for cluster, and
if the reported value exceeds 4.1 million then that is what is causing
your problem.

There are two ways to fix this.

The easiest, and most destructive, method is to reformat the hard
drive. This will correct the cluster size and also wipe out everthing
on the drive in the process.

Or you can use a disk partitioning utility such as Partition Magic or
BootItNG (http://www.bootitng.com) to change the cluster size of the
existing partition without reformatting. This is usually safe and
effective but there is some risk, as there always is when you tinker
with the data structure of a hard drive, and so you need to have good
backups of everthing critical just in case things go blooey.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."