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PMMail and EARLYMEMINIT=TRUE problem?

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Dariusz Piatkowski:
So I figured I would try a few different options in order to improve the configuration of my system, but as I did I came up with this surprising (to me anyways) discovery:

Setting EARLYMEMINIT=TRUE in CONFIG.SYS causes my PMMail to crash the whole machine...not a hard crash, but CTRL-ALT-DEL is the only way out.

This is applicable to PMMail 3.22.00.2301 (32534).

Has anyone encountered this before? Any ideas what may be causing the symptom I'm seeing?

Doug Bissett:

--- Quote ---Has anyone encountered this before? Any ideas what may be causing the symptom I'm seeing?
--- End quote ---

I am amazed that you can run your machine without EARLYMEMINIT=TRUE, and I have never seen it cause a problem, when set. PMMail is probably just one of the programs that might have a problem. The most likely cause is running out of resources (most likely, lower shared memory space). If you haven't done it, yet, change VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT to 2560. 3072 is max, but that often causes a different problem. Also, be sure that those DLLs, that can be marked to use high shared memory space, are marked to do so (Mozilla, OpenOffice). PMMail uses high shared memory space, but it also uses lower shared memory space. If lower shared memory space is almost full, the system may not be able to load something, and it will sit there waiting for the memory to become available. If it does not become available, you get what you describe. More often, something will crash, because a lot of programs simply assume hat they will get a memory allocation, and then try to use it, even when they don't get it.

EARLYMEMINIT is only used at boot time, to allow drivers etc. to access more memory, so it really shouldn't affect anything after the system is booted, unless you are right on the edge of running out of memory space, and it uses enough to push it over the cliff.

Ian Manners:
If memory serves..

The only time you should not have EARLYMEMINIT=TRUE in your config.sys file is if you are using a motherboard with ISA slots, possibly that includes laptops with PCMCIA 16bit cards as well. Otherwise it is as Doug states. I also use PMMail v3.11.47.2052

I have no problem with that statement along with 'VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560'.
I do turn my computer off every night but with Dave's build of Firefox left open all day along with PMMail, my PC gets  a lot of work using Open Office and PMView for university assignments so I like to start fresh every morning.

Andreas Schnellbacher:
BTW: I have here a 14 years old mainboard Asus A7V880, that won't work with EARLYMEMINIT=TRUE. I've just checked the dmidecode output that it has no ISA connectors.

That's the only one, I know that has such problems. So in general, the ISA theory sounds reasonable.

Sigurd Fastenrath:

--- Quote from: Ian Manners on October 08, 2019, 07:32:19 pm ---If memory serves..

The only time you should not have EARLYMEMINIT=TRUE in your config.sys file is if you are using a motherboard with ISA slots, possibly that includes laptops with PCMCIA 16bit cards as well.

--- End quote ---

And if you are using HPFS386.

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