1MBFort

1MBFort (VERSION 1.0) Copyright (c) 1995, John McSorley ------------------------------------------------------------------------ First Published in PC Magazine March 29, 1995 (Utilities) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1MBFort by John McSorley PURPOSE: Windows sometimes displays a warning message telling you that there isn't enough memory to run another program when you have plenty of memory. This is caused by a lack of low memory, memory below 1MB. 1MBFort solves this problem by preventing programs from using large blocks of it. The companion utility View1MB lets you analyze low memory by providing information about free and allocated blocks. SETUP: To install 1MBFort, just copy 1MBFORT.EXE into a directory on your hard disk. 1MBFort then can be launched in one of two ways. You can use Program Manager to create an icon in your Windows Startup group, or add 1MBFORT.EXE to the Load = line of WIN.INI. The second method is preferable, since it ensures that 1MBFort is the first application started. REMARKS: 1MBFort operates invisibly, but you can tell it is running by checking the Windows Task Manager list. Next to the 1MBFort program name in Task Manager is the number and size of the fragments created. By default, the fragment size is 10,240 bytes. This usually works fine, but you can change the fragment size if you have problems launching programs. To change the fragment size, use Windows NotePad or another plain text editor to edit the file called 1MBFORT.INI in your Windows directory. The block size 1MBFort uses to create the fragments is set using this format: [1MBFORT] BlockSize = nnnnn where nnnnn is in the range 5000 to 20000 and indicates the block size in bytes. If you enter a value below 5000, 1MBFort changes it to 5000. Likewise, values above 20000 are converted to 20000. 1MBFort can be terminated by selecting it within Task Manager and pressing the End Task button. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- John McSorley is a programmer/analyst for the Information Technology Group at a major computer manufacturer. -----------------------------------------------------------------------