HIMEM.SYS unreliable XMS memory@ 01F94802

[david]

recently replaced K7VMA motherboard,I have 2 10gb hdd, 1
a western dig (slave),& 1 excelstor (master).having
reloaded windows 98 se, windows fails to load giving a
HIMEM.SYS has detected unreliable XMS memory at address
01F94802. XMS driver not installed. HIMEM.SYS is
missing.I appear to have 8960 shared memory in addition
to my normal 256xxxx. can you help me solve this problem
what is xms memory, how can i install driver, and how can
HIMEM.SYS detect XMS driver missing when HIMEM.SYS is
also missing. have looked in bios not sure were to look
but looked any way,. held down ctrl key and looked in
help to no avail some body must know what i've done
wrong, give us a hand please david

 

[Len]

You did note that this was an "XP Hardware NG, right?

However, I would try reseating the RAM chips on your board as HIMEM.SYS is
trying to tell you it is reading bad memory. If you thing about the
order... Himem.sys attempted to load, found bad memory address, therefore
did not load and seeing it did not load at startup the system considers it
as missing.

In the Windows directory it is pretty certain that you will find Himem.sys -
the fact that it can not load stops W98 from booting. xms memory "Extended
Memory" has been required by Windows since '95 and was used by windows
versions in the 3.x era. Himem.sys is the memory "manager" that allows
windows to store information in those capacitors on the RAM stick -
otherwise it is just a bunch of electrical components and not usable by the
OS.

These is even another memory controler from the past "Emm386.exe" that
actually breaks the Extended Memory into memory pages so that information is
not stored on top of other information in Extended Memory. I don't remember
for sure if W98 still used it or not but it certainly uses something
simular!

Anyway either the RAM is not properly seated or was damaged (static
electricity or whatever) during the MB swap. Reseat or try new RAM chips.
BTW sounds like you have on-board video? which is probably where the "8960
shared" comes from. The system is using roughly 8MB of system RAM for Video
RAM.

FWIW,
Len

 

[Pavel A.]

Try this standalone test of your RAM.
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

- PA