Increasing Your Available DOS RAM

Some problems installing or using WinFix are caused by not having enough DOS RAM under Windows, and this also can cause a variety of different symptoms.   WinFix needs about 490k bytes under Windows 95, and about 505k bytes under Windows 98.  Freeing up DOS RAM should also improve the general performance of your system.

To see if you have enough, and increase it if necessary, follow the simple steps below. 

We suggest printing out this page to use as a guide.

1) Click the Start button, choose Programs, then choose MS-DOS Prompt.  At the DOS prompt, enter the command

mem  /p  /c

You will see a list of all the programs loaded and running on your system that use DOS RAM.  At the bottom of the page, you should see a line called "Largest executable program size".  If the number listed is less than 490k for Windows 95 or 505k for Windows 98, you need to free up some DOS RAM to be able to use WinFix.   Freeing up DOS RAM should also improve the general performance of your system.  

2) A common reason for having a low amount of DOS RAM is that Windows is loading the driver for compressed disks, even though the user is not using disk compression.  To check this, look again at the  mem  /p  /c  list of loaded programs, and see if drvspace.bin or dblspace.bin is listed.  If one of them is listed, but you are not using compressed drives, you can disable the unused compression driver by doing steps 3) through 7) below.  If one of them is not listed, skip to step 8) below.  

3) Click on My Computer, then click on the View menu, then click on Folder Options, then click on the View tab.

4) Check the "Show all files" option, and uncheck the "Hide file extensions for known file types" option, then click OK.

5) In My computer, click on the icon for the C: drive; find the entry for drvspace.bin and drvspace.ini, (or dblspace.bin and dblspace.ini).  Right click on each one, and choose Rename, then rename them to drvspace.bix and drvspace.inx (or dblspace.bix and dblspace.inx). 

6) Reboot the computer, then repeat step 1) above to verify that the "Largest executable program size" has in fact increased because the compression driver is no longer on the list of loaded programs.

7) If available DOS RAM has increased to above 490k for Win95, or 505k for Win98, then try to re-install WinFix. 

8) DOS RAM can also be used up by drivers and programs that load because they are listed in the files c:\config.sys or c:\autoexec.bat. 

Check those files for any programs that are no longer needed and thus can be removed by putting the letters REM followed by a space, at the beginning of each line that mentions a program you want to eliminate. 

9) Reboot the computer, then repeat step 1) above to verify that the "Largest executable program size" has in fact increased.

10) If you have increased the available DOS RAM to above the 490k for Win95, or 505k for Win98, then try to re-install WinFix.