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From: jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: 386 enhanced mode
Message-ID: <jcmorris.658004352@mwunix.mitre.org>
Date: 7 Nov 90 18:59:12 GMT
References: <7017@hub.ucsb.edu> <57852@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
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In article <7017@hub.ucsb.edu> 6600bori@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Boris Burtin) writes:

>I'm running Windows 3.0 on my 25mhz 386 with 2 megs, and I had some 
>questions about this so-called enhanced mode.  When I type just "win"
>at the command prompt, Windows throws me into STANDARD mode with 907k
>RAM.  The manual says that with my configuration, it should default to
>enhanced....
>Is it normal for Windows not to default to enhanced mode? 

Last time I looked the spec it said Win3 defaults to enhanced mode only 
if you have a '386 (obviously) *and* you have 2M of memory *available to
DOS*.  If DOS can't see at least 2M you get standard mode.

I have this situation on a NEC PowerMate/386 with 2M of memory installed,
but which uses the top of that address space for shadow RAM.  Since
DOS never sees that space Windows declares that the conditions for
enhanced mode aren't satisfied and defaults to standard.

Other problems with enhanced mode I see frequently (although they don't
seem to apply to you) are users with badly downlevel HIMEM.SYS drivers
(including WIN3 beta versions), non-Microsoft replacements for HIMEM
(please, Qualitas...send me a working version of 386^max...), and users
who started out on a /286 machine and copied the WIN3 directories to a
/386 (the setup is vastly different...best to reinstall Windows).

Joe Morris