I havent't had that behaviour but I've had sticks not being detected, making the system hang, or actually being detected at half capacity. Cleaning the contacts fixed that.

Had the same issue very recently on my 386. It would intermittently only count half of my RAM. I was lucky to have a pile of sticks to try, so I swapped the lot and the problem went away.

I was too lazy to investigate further, but my guess was one bad stick causing a bank to fail.

I've also been wondering if the BIOS has a bug. It's a V1014.003 BETA, despite people saying that it's the best and latest version...

Maybe I need to roll back to 1013.

What components does your retro rig have? What memory configuration are you using? Which type, etc.

It can be any issue (caps, overheating, etc) so more information might be helpful.

AGP: nVidia 420MX 64MB (Because a lot of the games that I have don't need more than 64 MB)
PCI: (This is blank for now, but I have an ATI All-in Wonder video card on the way)
PCI: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (For MIDI Keyboard I/O + mid-2000s games and movies, because I have a 4.1 surround sound system)
PCI: Hauppauge WinTV (44371) Card (For later video recording/video input)
ISA: VFX1 VIP Decoder Card (Will be Cable-attached to the ATI All-in-Wonder card in the first PCI card slot)
ISA: SB16 CT1740 (For MS-DOS Gaming + FM Synth MIDI Playback + Joystick Port)
ISA: Etherlink 3C509B-TP ISA PNP Ethernet Card (For retro system updates/Zandronum on Win XP)

I also recapped the system (preventative, given how old the previous capacitors were, and the period they were made), and did a VRM chip modification (replaced the CPU power chip, the replacement of which was new in its original cut-reel package) to support my 866MHz Pentium III. I had a slight bit of trouble when a mini capacitor came off the board while reflowing the solder for removal, but I was able to put it back where it belonged. Thankfully the seller had included pictures of that particular area of the motherboard in the listing on eBay, and it was the only component that came off when I modified it. I did test for polarity, and it read in nanofarads, those types which I believe are not polarized.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, everything buggy that I've been running into has to do with only Windows 98SE. I have a removable main hard drive slot, and two installations of Windows, one 98SE and one XP on separate drive drawers. Windows XP and DOS seem to work just fine. (The only bugs I've run into with those two are game-related, and even then, the related games are not so stable unless patched or configured a specific way.)

Maybe Windows 98SE shouldn't be updated, then?

(Also, I ran Memtest+86. No problems were found.)

I think I may have found the problem...

The Hauppauge TV card seems to have either buggy drivers or the capacitors (the infamous electrolytic SMD type of capacitors) on the card are affecting ONLY Windows 98. Once I installed them, the system started acting up, and a registry recovery didn't help. First sign of problems was a shutdown that hung, like I have seen before, but then when I tried installing Quicktime 6.52, the installer glitched out and took the system with it. So much so that I needed to reinstall the OS. Luckily I discovered Clonezilla, and have two recovery images (one "start from scratch", one updated at base level) on a USB drive, so now I shouldn't have any problems. I also stopped using the July 2007 Auto-Patcher program (instead using the Unofficial Service Pack 3 update from MajorGeeks), and that seems to have calmed things down. The system seems to run much more smoothly and faster.

My ATI card also seems to be on its way. I'll see if the problems come back when I install it, based on a previous topic I posted a month or two ago.

EDIT: I am still getting that odd 540MB (Windows sees 528MB) memory count when I restart the system, though. Maybe its the BIOS?
EDIT 2: Huh. I guess the BIOS has some kind of trouble with any more than 512MB when it restarts. It really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, because none of my games use more than 512MB anyways. I'll try the 1013 BIOS later.

I was completely wrong. Everything seems to be in place, other than the odd memory count. The Hauppauge card works, the dual video cards work.

There seems to be system conflicts involving the Sound Blaster, as I was reminded from this topic: Doom 2 hangs on boot (Win98 SE - Real DOS). Then again, this seemed to be the bane of configurations back in the day. 😜

I also had this same problem on my Chaintech 6BTM, if I recall.

If you have windows 98se, 512MB, anything larger windows becomes unstable, pull memory till you have 512MB.

Cheers,