My system acts like a kid again !!

[pitroad]

After months of frustration, almost to the point of buying a new system, my puter is finally running normal again. I have a Dell 8100; 1.3 ghz; 256rdram; running ME. Several months ago I started having problems with IE and OE crashing. Various error messages. I then started getting blue screen errors; most having to do with vcache. On occasion I'd just lock up with a narrow green line right on top. I switched my browser to 'Opera' and my email to 'Thunderbird'. Still had crashes; just a little different message about which module, etc. I switched browsers again, this time to 'Firefox'. I was thinking running both mozilla products might stables things. Security was also a big factor in switching off IE. To make a long story short the crashes continued. I read forum after forum trying to hit on something. I finally hit on a couple of things.

First I went to the 'nvidia' web site (that's my video card). I asked here if I should reload the 'new' drivers they have. I was told to do it. I uninstalled the old display drivers and installed the new ones.

Second I researched vcache and found a white paper that suggested changing your 'system.ini' file to reflect a MinFileCache=2048 and MaxFileCache=8192.

Unfortunates I made both changes a pretty much the same time. I'm not sure which one did the trick, although I probably had trouble in both areas. Bottom line is my system has not crashed since. If the cache changes effected performance I really can't tell it.

I hope no one else is experiencing my problems but if you are these could be a couple of things to look at.

This is from a guy who couldn't tell the difference between a mother board and a father board, so take it for what's it worth.

 

[telecom69]

Many thanks pitroad for posting your results,there is always the chance it will help someone else in future....so many times people just disappear without acknowledging a fix, thanks again ....take care

 

[pitroad]

Update: Still have not experienced a crash since making the changes above. I did experiment with the MaxFileCache value. I probably had that value lower then needed. I have 256MB ram and the white paper suggested 32,768 not 8192 as I coded. I made that change; MaxFileCache=32768, and it really did speed my system up. If the system continues to be stable I will leave things as is, if I start having blue screen vcache errors I'll lower the value. I would rather have a slower stable machine then one that crashes all the time. I wish I knew for sure if it was the vcache changes or the updating of the display drivers that solved my problems. Oh well I'm just glad things are finally back to normal

 

[pitroad]

Update2: Well I decided to play with the MaxFileCache= value. I actually went back to the original value of 524288. IE crashed within 5 minutes. I then changed the value to 65536 and experienced another IE crash later. I am now back to 32768 and no problems.

Before making the vcache and display driver changes another weird thing was http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/home/main100.shtml would hang my system up. I can now view it with no problems.

I only mention these things because I know how frustrated I had become and if anyone is having these type of problems it may help.

 

[flavallee]

Delete all entries in the [vcache] section of the SYSTEM.INI file. They were useful with Windows 95, but not with Windows 98 and Windows ME(which does a much better job of memory management).

 

[pitroad]

For whatever reason my system does not perform when the maxfilecache value is above 32768. I start getting IE errors. Any idea's why ?