it's not your memory it's your bios.
Try searching for this matter on the vdmsound forum.

It might help if you turn as many legacy things off in the bios.

Hi Qbix and thanks for the prompt reply btw.

Ok, after reading the similar problems in the VDMSound forum, I tried disabling the onboard NIC in BIOS to see if that would fix the problem and still no luck. Going to try disabling on board USB, although that may present some problems for me as I use a number of USB devices.

So it would appear that the problem is actually a HW controller grabbing the memory address used to allocate the page frame for ems.

I also ran MEM with VDMS to generate the following report:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Conventional Memory :

Name Size in Decimal Size in Hex
------------- --------------------- -------------
MSDOS 12496 ( 12.2K) 30D0
KBD 3296 ( 3.2K) CE0
HIMEM 1248 ( 1.2K) 4E0
COMMAND 3120 ( 3.0K) C30
DOSX 34720 ( 33.9K) 87A0
FREE 112 ( 0.1K) 70
FREE 600160 (586.1K) 92860

Total FREE : 600272 (586.2K)

Upper Memory :

Name Size in Decimal Size in Hex
------------- --------------------- -------------
SYSTEM 217072 (212.0K) 34FF0
MOUSE 12528 ( 12.2K) 30F0
FREE 12256 ( 12.0K) 2FE0
FREE 20192 ( 19.7K) 4EE0

Total FREE : 32448 ( 31.7K)

Total bytes available to programs (Conventional+Upper) : 632720 (617.9K)
Largest executable program size : 599904 (585.8K)
Largest available upper memory block : 20192 ( 19.7K)

20971520 bytes total contiguous extended memory
0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
16628736 bytes available XMS memory
MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

So if I was to modify the EMM line in CONFIG.NT would it be possible to get XP to create the page frame at a different location?

ie: EMM=B=2FE0

I hope I'm on the right track.

Thanks again.

An addendum.

Disabled the onboard USB Controllers in my BIOS and hey presto:

Conventional Memory :

Name Size in Decimal Size in Hex
------------- --------------------- -------------
MSDOS 12448 ( 12.2K) 30A0
KBD 3296 ( 3.2K) CE0
EMM 176 ( 0.2K) B0
HIMEM 1248 ( 1.2K) 4E0
MOUSE 12528 ( 12.2K) 30F0
COMMAND 3120 ( 3.0K) C30
DOSX 34720 ( 33.9K) 87A0
FREE 112 ( 0.1K) 70
FREE 587472 (573.7K) 8F6D0

Total FREE : 587584 (573.8K)

Upper Memory :

Name Size in Decimal Size in Hex
------------- --------------------- -------------
SYSTEM 249840 (244.0K) 3CFF0
FREE 12272 ( 12.0K) 2FF0

Total FREE : 12272 ( 12.0K)

Total bytes available to programs (Conventional+Upper) : 599856 (585.8K)
Largest executable program size : 587216 (573.5K)
Largest available upper memory block : 12272 ( 12.0K)

4194304 bytes total EMS memory
4194304 bytes free EMS memory

20971520 bytes total contiguous extended memory
0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
16628736 bytes available XMS memory
MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area

Heaps of EMS suddenly available! What a pain.

Going to email Gigabyte about this one and let them know that the adresses they are using for the onboard USB prevent page frame allocation under XP.

Going to try the EMM=B=2FE0 in CONFIG.NT and see if that works to resolve the problem.

Thanks again. You're a champ but I guess U already know that 😀

Just thought you'd like to know that I gave up screwing around with trying to make XP alter the page frame and just tweaked DOSBox.

All the ol DOS stuff works sweetly now and I even managed to get a few things working that didn't work at all properly with VDMSound originally.

You've won me 😀

it doesn't happen too often that people you are able to fix the pageframe issue with that little pointer I gave.

When I read your post about dosbox running elite 2 like crap I thought It should be configured right. But you found that out yourself.

So you're a champ as well

btw it should be enough to disable legacy support for your usb and not totally usb. Not sure if you bios offers that option.

But it's a pain. people (except for us) don't seem to care anymore about ems/xms

Added to EMS Guide
Thread Closed.