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From: rgs@phadfa.ph.adfa.oz.au (Robert Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: 386SX,HIMEM.SYS,SMARTDRV.SYS
Summary: 386SX problems with HIMEM.SYS and SMARTDRV.SYS
Keywords: 386SX,HIMEM.SYS,SMARTDRV.SYS
Message-ID: <rgs.659275134@phadfa>
Date: 22 Nov 90 11:58:54 GMT
Sender: news@ccadfa.adfa.oz.au
Distribution: comp
Lines: 25

I have a Gateway 2000 386SX (4Meg ram) with a Video7 VGA board, and
have been having a problem with HIMEM.SYS and SMARTDRV.SYS in the
Windows 3 package.  Since there seem to be a couple of other people
out there who are having similar problems I thought I would post this
to see if anyone has a solution or at least an explanation.

Basically, if I load HIMEM.SYS followed by SMARTDRV.SYS (from
consecutive lines in my CONFIG.SYS file), then whenever I do anything
else after the machine has booted, it crashes, usually displaying a
"Parity Error ???" message, followed by "System Halted".  I have tried
all sorts of things but nothing seems to work, although with only
HIMEM.SYS installed Windows will run OK in enhanced mode ... but not
without the occasional "Irrecoverable Application Error".

Quite by accident, yesterday I hit the turbo switch on my machine which
reduced it's speed by half (from 16MHz).  Suddenly everything works fine
and I can load HIMEM.SYS and SMARTDRV.SYS and do anything I want without
any problems at all.  Does anyone have any clues as to what could be
causing this?  Is it the Video board (it has 256K ram)?  Could it be my
system board, maybe the C&T chipset?  I would love to hear from anyone
with any ideas or suggestions, since I don't want to be condemned to
running my 16MHz machine at 8MHz every time I want to run windows!

Robert Smith
(rgs@phadfa.ph.adfa.oz.au)