The LA Fox Developer Newsletter

July 1994

Traversing the GP Fault (Con't from p.7)

“stacks=9,256” establishes nine stacks, each of

which occupies 256 bytes of conventional memory.

You may have as many as 64 stacks, each of

which may be configured to consume from 32 to

512 bytes. Microsoft includes a “readme” docu-

ment with Windows 3. lx which suggests you try

the following sethngs in the “stacks=” line, in the

following order:

[Note: As a next step, the second line in

CONFIG.SYS may be further modified as follows:

The “noems” segment effectively disables ex-

panded memory, since very few programs access

these memory addresses any more. This segment

is strictly optional . The “novcpi” segment disables

the Virtual Control Program Interface. The added

benefit of the "novcpi" segment is that both Win

dows and Windows applications, like FoxPro, will

actually load faster.

The next installment of this discussion, ‘The Not-

So-Obvious”, will deal with additional segments

that can be added to this statement to further

reduce the possibilities of GPFs.

An added consideration here is to be using the

latest version of EMM386 you can find, preferably

the one contained in DOS 6.22. However, these

suggestions will work with DOS 6.0 and DOS 6.2.]

Set up a permanent swap file for Windows. This

can be accomplished by opening the “Main” Windows

box, double-clicking on the “Control Panel” Icon, then

double-clicking on the “386 Enhanced” icon. Next

click the Virtual Memory pushbutton, then the

“Change” pushbutton. Performing this step will en-

large the window. Change the “Type” from “Tempo-

rary” to “Permanent” and the “New Size” from what-

ever it is to 8000 KB. (The OS will automatically

adjust the size to 7980.) Confirm the changes and

restart Windows. 8 MB is a good overall average size

for the permanent swap file, but you can use more or

less depending on the remaining space on your hard

drive. Also, be aware that exceeding the 8 MB perma-

nent swap file size may subject your hard drive to a

certain amount of “disk thrashing”. (The alternative is

to reduce the size of the temporary file.) Setting up

this permanent swap file will also create a new file in

the “C:V’ root directory named “386spart.par” and will

be marked as “unmoveable” by disk utility prOgrams

such as Norton Utilities. While it’s acceptable to leave

the “Use 32-bit Disk Access” box checked, I will be

revisiting this aspect in the next installment.

Reinstall Windows. Occasionally Windows files and

drivers will get corrupted. To test for this, make a

directory called something other than “WINDOWS”, for

instance ‘WINDAS”, and do a custom installation to

that directory. The custom installation will install a

“bare bones” version of Windows and will allow you to

test without interference from any other drivers which

may have been placed in either the "win.ini" or

“system.ini” files. Remember to remove “windows”

from the path statement in AUTOEXEC.BAT and

replace it with the renamed directory.

Next month, I’ll be addressing some of the not-so-

obvious and lesser-known aspects of the Windows

environment, as well as some hardware issues which

may interfere with Windows performance.

(To be continued

)

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