1gb of RAM and Win98SE

Does Win98SE automatically make use of all RAM installed in the computer, or are there registry tweaks that must be made? (For the curious: Yes, I STILL run Win98 as I have some legacy apps that won't work with anything newer. I have such much RAM because I work with multimedia files.)

L.

You can make the system run with up to 1024MB, by opening system.ini with notepad and adding the line MaxFileCache=524288. Save the file, exit, and reboot.

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Thanks Crashman and Toejam, you guys are tops! I could have searched the net for years and not found that (I actually searched for about an hour before giving up and seeking competent help).

Why does the Anandtech article that you linked, Toejam, suggest Min/Max values of only 64Mb? Crashman suggested a MaxFileCache value of 524288, so should I insert this under the [VCache] section?

MinFileCache=65536
MaxFileCache=524288

To me, it looks like this would tell Windows to "begin by reserving 64Mb of my 1,000Mb RAM just for the VCache, but Windows is allowed to grow that cache to 512Mb...?"

Why would I ever want Windows to eat up 512Mb of my RAM just for a cache? And why can't Windows "see" more than 512Mb RAM without these lines?

Sorry, I'm not trying to be nit-picky but I want to understand (at least conceptually) what I am doing. I read the MSKB article Q253912 that the Anandtech article referred to and it was not helpful. This is the sweet spot of the article, and it made no sense to me whatsoever:

"The Windows 32-bit protected-mode cache driver (Vcache) determines the maximum cache size based on the amount of RAM that is present when Windows starts. Vcache then reserves enough memory addresses to permit it to access a cache of the maximum size so that it can increase the cache to that size if needed. These addresses are allocated in a range of virtual addresses from 0xC0000000 through 0xFFFFFFFF (3 to 4 gigabytes) known as the system arena."

"On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache size can be large enough that Vcache consumes all of the addresses in the system arena, leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions such as opening an MS-DOS prompt (creating a new virtual machine)."

Virtual memory addresses? Virtual cache? I am only familiar with hard disk caches, where frequently used data are copied to RAM to speed up subsequent reads. What is this stuff about virtual addresses (at 3-4Gb range???) and how does that relate to Windows not seeing RAM above 512Mb -- and why (conceptually) does the Min/MaxFileCache setting fix that??

Guys, I'm not looking to understand memory management here, I just want a ballpark idea of what changing this setting does so I can be sure I'm implimenting the correct fix.

That was exactly what I wanted. Thanks, Toey.
Laird