I need some old fashioned DOS help?

Question

I just picked up an old (circa '95) desktop computer, IBM, running on Windows 95 plus. I installed an old DOS program (created in 1993) into the computer. This program is a pretty simple word processing program which only runs on older computers with slower processors (up to Windows 98)

My problem is when I am in the program and need to use one of the functions, I get an error message which reads "not enough memory to load your personal dictionary index."

This personal dictionary index is only about 2.5 megs and is an integral part of this word processing program.

Does anyone have any suggestions to somehow allow DOS to use more available memory? I'm sure there is enough hardware memory to handle this program. Any help is appreciated. Thank you

PS, I'm semi computer literate when it comes to following any directions that might help here. Thanks again

Answer 1

Do you know how long it is such I looked at DOS under Win95?



I am assuming that you are running the DOS within the Windows environment. You can create an icon that points to the "Command" command for running DOS.



If you look in the properties of the icon, there is a place where you can set how much memory DOS is allowed to use. It is probably set too low (believe the default was 640 kb). Trying resetting that amount until you have enough to run the program. You probably have enough physical memory - but are just not allocating it to DOS.



(Sorry that I do not remember the process well enough to "step by step" it.)

Answer 2

Memory allocation for old PCs and DOS was a real pain because there was the initial conventional memory that goes up to 640K only, and then up to 1MB is considered Expanded memory (EMS), and then anything over 1MB is considered Expanded Memory (XMS), and you had to configure each type separately. It's been a long time, but I think how it worked was the computer would always use conventional memory first, which was capped at 640K. A program would not know more memory existed in the machine unless it was configured to use EMS, and when that memory is exhausted to then use XMS. And you had to have drivers for them to work.



Anyway, Windows ties to provide DOS compatibility. I'm not sure if these properties existed yet in Windows 95, but take a look.

Go to the executable file of your program. (The file that has the .exe extension that you use to start up the program.)

Right-click on it and select Properties. Look for a tab that's either "Compatibility" or maybe "Memory".

If you see it, you should see that you can allocate certain amounts of memory to each of the types: Conventional, expanded, extended, etc.

True different settings and see what works.



If that doesn't work, you can try DOSBox.

DOSBox is a free DOS Environment emulator for Windows systems. I've never used it myself, so I don't know how hard is it to setup. But I hear it's great for this purpose.

http://www.dosbox.com/

Answer 3

See the source belo :)



http://help.rnrtech.com/DOSfreememory.html