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From: fisher@sc2a.unige.ch
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Memory allocation error
Message-ID: <1991May23.092728.440@sc2a.unige.ch>
Date: 23 May 91 07:27:28 GMT
References: <1991May20.055124.24741@ariel.unm.edu>
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland
Lines: 34

In article <1991May20.055124.24741@ariel.unm.edu>, rrubio@triton.unm.edu (Dent L'Dir) writes:
> Memory allocation error
> Cannot load COMMAND.COM
> SYSTEM HALTED
> 
> is the wonderful error Im am beginning to get on my machine.  (The error doesnt
> look exactly like that, but the idea is the same).
> [...]

I probaly don't need to tell you that COMMAND.COM has a resident portion,
loaded low, and a much larger portion, loaded high, which can be overwritten
by memory allocation requests of child processes (i.e. programs that are run).
Whenever you exit a program, the resident portion checks whether the high
portion has been overwritten, and loads it again from disk if needed.

If your program trashes the COMSPEC variable, if the disk containing
COMMAND.COM gets rerouted (by a SUBST or Novell's MAP), or if COMMAND.COM
itself is deleted or renamed, you'll get a similar message, with the indication
`COMMAND.COM not found'.

This is not the case here, so the reason is probaly that the offending program
(i.e. the one you run *before* the crash) doesn't release the memory it has
requested upon exit.  Some otherwise very serious programs (I know of one
accounting program), have (or had) this bug.  Also, some early c compilers
(don't remember which one in particular) didn't automagically release the
memory arena in case the programmer had forgotten to do it cleanly.

Now this is a *very serious* bug, which no sane user should tolerate.  Find the
offending program, make extensive tests to be shure of your facts, and ask for
a free upgrade or a refund.

Hope this is of some use,

Markus G. Fischer, Dept of Anthropolgy, Geneva CH       fisher@sc2a.unige.ch