Originally posted by Unregistered I've been trying to get MoM to run, both with VDMSound and just with a regular Windows XP .pif file. No matter what I've tried so far, I get "You must have at least 2700 k of expanded memory" error messages.

There's a good chance that your motherboard isn't allowing for enough "Upper Memory" to create an EMS memory block.

Create a file named GO.BAT and edit it to contain the single command:

MEM /C >VDMSMEM.TXT

then run it with VDMSound (right-click and choose Run with VDMS), it should create a text file called VDMSMEM.TXT and report something like the following:

Conventional Memory :

Name Size in Decimal Size in Hex
------------- --------------------- -------------
MSDOS 13184 ( 12.9K) 3380
KBD 3296 ( 3.2K) CE0
EMM 176 ( 0.2K) B0
HIMEM 1248 ( 1.2K) 4E0
COMMAND 3152 ( 3.1K) C50
FREE 112 ( 0.1K) 70
FREE 633984 (619.1K) 9AC80

Total FREE : 634096 (619.2K)

Upper Memory :

Name Size in Decimal Size in Hex
------------- --------------------- -------------
SYSTEM 180208 (176.0K) 2BFF0
MOUSE 12528 ( 12.2K) 30F0
DOSX 34720 ( 33.9K) 87A0
FREE 256 ( 0.3K) 100
FREE 34336 ( 33.5K) 8620

Total FREE : 34592 ( 33.8K)

Total bytes available to programs (Conventional+Upper) : 668688 (653.0K)
Largest executable program size : 633712 (618.9K)
Largest available upper memory block : 34336 ( 33.5K)

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

Copy the text from the VDMSMEM.TXT file and paste your results here. You might end up having to shut off some motherboard devices into order to create more "Upper Memory".

In the case of "Masters of Magic", you can bypass the whole EMS problem by using DosBox. This emulates EMS memory even if your motherboard can't create it. It also avoids the audio-pause problem that it has on NT/2000/XP.