Boot up problems

[Ianua]

A friend has a problem with his PC. It won't boot up in normal mode and keeps on getting the alarm, EMM386 has detected error # 3 in a application at memory address IAFD:0D7C. To minimise the chance of data loss, EMM386 has halted your computer.

Boot up has been okay in Safe Mode except once when it shut down.


Any ideas?

[Ianua]

How would I disable EMM386 in msconfig?

[Alec]

Wow, man, what OS is this? It must be something like Windows 95 or Windows 98, I guess. It's just that I haven't heard an EMM386 reference for years!

EMM386 was an "Extended Memory Manager" that allowed DOS applications to make use of memory greater than 1MB. Yes, you read that right... one lousy, measly MEGABYTE. I believe it is totally unnecessary in Win95/98/ME, and could perhaps even cause some problems like you encountered. EMM386 was coded as a device driver that was started by an entry in your CONFIG.SYS file. Under Win9x, you should be able to just Start | Run | msconfig, select the Config.sys tab, and uncheck the line with EMM386 in it. If you are manually editing the file you can either delete it entirely, or I believe you can also put "REM" at the beginning of the line to have it treated as a remark or comment that gets skipped in processing.

[Ianua]

Cheers. it's Windows 98 SE.