Quick Question, Please Help!

[Cronos]

Could a defective video card cause frequent VCACHE blue screen errors?

I just installed a brand new Elsa Gladiac GeForce 2 GTS 32MB AGP video card into my new PC I ordered from a local shop. My order came with everything brand new from the dealer except the card and was pre-loaded with Windows ME. The system stats are:

Pentium III 933 Mghz CPU, Epox 3CVA2 board, 256 MB PC133 RAM, SB Live XGAMER 5.1, Elsa Gladiac GeForce 2 GTS 32MB video card, A Seagate (master) and Maxtor (slave) 30 Gig HD, a Plexwriter CD-RW (master) and 52x CD-ROM (slave)

I randomly receive this exact blue screen error and lock up all the time:

File Name : VCACHE(01) + 000015A4 Error : OE : 0028 : C004EC40

Is there a possibility that this would be caused by a defective video card (i.e. bad video RAM) or is the VCACHE strictly system RAM and hard drive related? This would help me decide what component/company to return hardware to.

Thanks for your help and concern,
Josh

[BigBlue66]

Hi Cronos,

I think your video card is fine. From what I understand, Vcache is the disk cache replacement for smartdrive.

If left unadjusted, Windows will grab most of your available ram for disk caching. In order to limit the amount of ram that windows allocates, you must edit your system.ini file.

Under the heading [Vcache], you can add statements that limit the amount of ram that Windows can have for disk caching. Some people use both a minimum and maximum setting, others only use a maximum size setting.

Try adding these lines under the [vcache] heading in your system.ini file:

minfilecache=0
maxfilecache= Usually, 25% of your available physical RAM, expressed in kilobytes.

The information I have provided is only to get you going in the right direction. Try the MS Knowledge Base for additional information on how to most effectively limit the RAM using the statements above. Maybe some other guys will have a tip or three, too.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

Big Blue 66


[This message has been edited by BigBlue66 (edited 12-19-2000).]

[sea69]

g'day BB_66 http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

As a result of your last Post, I ran si-sally and here are my current numbers: Current {disk cache'}> 28 MB
Maximum: 117 MB
Minimum: 5 MB
Says my drive index is 11471

I'm thinking this needs to be adjusted??

I have 128 Dimm sdram/ front side bus= 2x 100Mhz ( 200Mhz data rate)30 gig hdd.- 800Mhz AMD athlon T-bird 751 chipset

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lol...so I cant spell...

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 12-19-2000).]

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 12-19-2000).]

[BigBlue66]

Hey Sea,

I am by no means an expert on this issue. The information that I got on it says that your maximum setting should equal no more than 25% or so, of available RAM. In your case, then, the max statement should read around 32megs.

Why do you ask? Are you having BSOD with Vcache? If everything seems to be OK, maybe you shouldn't try to fix it. It was just something I thought maybe Cronos could use because of his crashes.

I am not sure what your drive index number means. Maybe somebody else will. Can you possibly find out what it means?

But again, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66

[sea69]

Hey BB_66

No I wasnt having problems. I was just looking to have my settings corrected. (if they need to be) I am getting from what I read that if you dont limit these settings win98 will try and take all RAM that it can get.

I was thinking that my settings were too high. I am however not having any problems with this system since I am continuosly finding things that can be set better as well http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

It appears that I have something controlling it ( max and min), cause I just benchmarked C drive all is a-ok !!

so I will not 'fix' it...

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/tongue.gif

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lol...so I cant spell...

[Reid]

This appears to be a good article on Windows 98 Memory Management (http://www.freespeech.org/Khephra/a/memmgmt.htm).

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reido@my-deja.com

[sea69]

thanks Reid http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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lol...so I cant spell...