System memory problem -- Because of large hard drive?

I have 512 megabytes of memory on my Dell 8100 using Windows ME. I
can't open more than one program at a time because I'll get error
messages that say I'm out of memory.
Norton Utilities says I have a system memory problem. I can't see that
I have any programs hogging a huge amount of system memory. Could it
be because I have a 160 gigabyte hard disk that's not partitioned?
Are there any simple fixes? If I went to a controller card and used
it's bios for the hard drive, would that free up memory?
Thanks in advance for any help.
--

"Illegitimis non carborundum" ®

--General Joe Stilwell

Win Me is not designed for use with hard drives 137GB. Having a 160GB
unpartitionend drive using the FAT32 filing system is IMO always going to
create problems and it is likely that you will have problems when
attempting to both defrag and scandisk (see KB229154 - "Your Computer Does
Not Have Enough Free
Memory to Defrag the Drive" Error Message"
(http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=229154)) and you will also see a
cosmetic problem when setting virtual memory (See MS KB272620 - "Negative
Hard Disk Free Size Reported on Virtual Memory Tab in System Properties"
(http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=272620)).

Win Me, like previous Win 9x operating systems can handle up to 2GB of RAM
however if you have more than 512MB it is essential to limit the virtual
cache to no more than 512MB as follows:
To limit vcache, open system.ini and add the lines
[VCache]
MaxFileCache=512000
Note that this will still mean that all memory is available to
applications
but is simply limiting the amount used as virtual cache memory See KB
253912 - ""Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM
Installed" (http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=253912).
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2005]



Steve Timko wrote:

I have 512 megabytes of memory on my Dell 8100 using Windows ME. I
can't open more than one program at a time because I'll get error
messages that say I'm out of memory.
Norton Utilities says I have a system memory problem. I can't see that
I have any programs hogging a huge amount of system memory. Could it
be because I have a 160 gigabyte hard disk that's not partitioned?
Are there any simple fixes? If I went to a controller card and used
it's bios for the hard drive, would that free up memory?
Thanks in advance for any help.

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
Win Me is not designed for use with hard drives 137GB. Having a 160GB
unpartitionend drive using the FAT32 filing system is IMO always going to
create problems and it is likely that you will have problems when
attempting to both defrag and scandisk (see KB229154 - "Your Computer Does
Not Have Enough Free
Memory to Defrag the Drive" Error Message"
(http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=229154)) and you will also see a
cosmetic problem when setting virtual memory (See MS KB272620 - "Negative
Hard Disk Free Size Reported on Virtual Memory Tab in System Properties"
(http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=272620)).

Win Me, like previous Win 9x operating systems can handle up to 2GB of RAM
however if you have more than 512MB it is essential to limit the virtual
cache to no more than 512MB as follows:
To limit vcache, open system.ini and add the lines
[VCache]
MaxFileCache=512000
Note that this will still mean that all memory is available to
applications
but is simply limiting the amount used as virtual cache memory See KB
253912 - ""Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM
Installed" (http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=253912).
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP [2001-2005]



Steve Timko wrote:

I have 512 megabytes of memory on my Dell 8100 using Windows ME. I
can't open more than one program at a time because I'll get error
messages that say I'm out of memory.
Norton Utilities says I have a system memory problem. I can't see that
I have any programs hogging a huge amount of system memory. Could it
be because I have a 160 gigabyte hard disk that's not partitioned?
Are there any simple fixes? If I went to a controller card and used
it's bios for the hard drive, would that free up memory?
Thanks in advance for any help.


Another cause of out of memory messages is a virus infection.

Steve