77 replies to this topic

[was_jaclaz]

Then again, I might as well have kept silent than post a reply on impulse. Sorry!

Yep.

Probably rephrasing your AFAIK as "without having ANY experience on the specific matter, that is what I presume" would have been more accurate.




jaclaz

[dencorso]

I just looked inside the Gavotte_RAMDisk_1.0.4096.5_200811130.7z, which I attached to a previous post... So, now I affirm that, yes, there is not one but two 64-bit versions of RRAMDISK.SYS and also 64-bit versions of the support programs. And since the package remains named 1.0.4096.5 I suppose it still has the 4 GiB limit. I cannot test it because I don't have access to any machine having a x64 NT-family OS, nor have any prospect of having it in the near future. It's amazing how those files had been there all along and I didn't notice, much less acknowledge, their presence.

[was_jaclaz]

Yep.
I guess we need to wait for Lancelot or any other "64-bit-enabled" user, in order to actually know more about it.

However, here it is reported to be working on x64:
http://www.planetamd...showtopic=35289

While checking if by any chance a new version was out, I just found this:
http://www.megaleech..._Vista_And_2003
http://www.romexsoftware.com/
http://www.romexsoft....Setup.zip.html
which would be also worth a try.
(at the moment 32-bit only)

And a report that it works under Windows 7, apparently:
http://forum.eeeuser...ic.php?id=58173



jaclaz

[Lancelot]

I guess we need to wait for Lancelot or any other "64-bit-enabled" user, in order to actually know more about it.

However, here it is reported to be working on x64:
http://www.planetamd...showtopic=35289

Since i dont have >4GB ram I cant test >4GB
at least what i can do is:
Confirming Gavotte_RAMDisk_1.0.4096.5_200811130.zip is working on hostosx64, Also reminding XP/2k3-x64 users should follow petz02 post#6 at planetamd64

No I tried doing it from step three and its a no go. You need the device driver installed. For some reason doing a right click and install on the .inf file didn't work for me. Windows XP Pro 64bit SP2.

I had to go into
control panel ----> Add Hardware.

then in the wizard
Next(wait for auto detect to finish) ----> select 'Yes, I have already connected the hardware' and next.

then
Go to the bottom of the list 'Add a new hardware device' and select next ----> select 'Install the hardware that I manually select.......(Advanced)' and next.

then
select the top item in the list 'Show all devices' and next(this take a few seconds to load)

then
Finally you are at the bloody manual driver install screen(What a Saga). Choose 'Have Disk' and load the driver. You should now see a 'Ram Driver' device in the Device Manager under a new category called 'RamDisk'. Now that this is installed if you start the program that comes with the drivers it should now start working. As per my last post though, it seems you have to either restart your PC or disable then re-enable the 'RamDisk Driver' device from the device manger to get new setting to take affect. Also if you want it to be there apon restart it looks like you need to use the command line tool rdutil.exe to save to registry your RamDisk image otherwise on reboot it won't start properly.

CU

[dog]

We have at least one report of >4GB usage:
http://www.boot-land...?...p;p=41508

[was_jaclaz]

We have at least one report of >4GB usage:
http://www.boot-land...?...p;p=41508

You mean this one, right (the link you posted is not fully working):
http://www.boot-land...amp;#entry41504

jaclaz

[pscEx]

I do not see a practical usage of a 4 GB RAM disk.

Please, can somebody tell me one?

Peter

[was_jaclaz]

I do not see a practical usage of a 4 GB RAM disk.

Please, can somebody tell me one?

Peter

Having a VERY large \Temp directory (lots of Internet accesses and VERY rare reboots)?

Hey, you asked for a reason, not for a good one.



Check the just posted link to the newly found driver:
http://www.romexsoftware.com/
http://www.romexsoft...comparison.html

and test the driver, the setup utility has an option to set TEMP on the RAMDISK.



jaclaz

[Joshua]

I do not see a practical usage of a 4 GB RAM disk.

Please, can somebody tell me one?

4 GB RAM disk is not enough!
If we have a bigger one, we can copy complete win7-dvd to RAM disk, and build win7pe project much quicker during development!

Joshua

[dencorso]

I do not see a practical usage of a 4 GB RAM disk.

Please, can somebody tell me one?

Peter

To get rid of internet junk without actually having to delete it. For one who reboots regularly a 0.5 to 1.5 GiB will do fine. I use 0.5 GiB on Win XP and 1.5 GiB in Win 98SE (I have just 3 GiB RAM, and my XP is much happier with 2.5 than with 1.5 GiB available). I wrote it in more detail, with 98SE in mind, here: http://www.msfn.org/...o...33579&st=61. Now, I second what jaclaz said, for very rare reboots, bigger than 1.5 GiB is much better. And, then again, if you put 6-8 GiB in a board and use a x86 NT-family OS, you'll have at least 2.5-4.5 GiB RAM that can only be used by the RAMDisk. In this particular case even putting the swapfile on RAMDisk can be useful.

[dencorso]

We have at least one report of >4GB usage:
http://www.boot-land...?...p;p=41508

You mean this one, right (the link you posted is not fully working):
http://www.boot-land...amp;#entry41504

jaclaz

Thanks a lot to both of you, dog and jaclaz!
I stand corrected: the Gavotte Rramdisk works above 4 GiB.
The link provided by dog (now working, thanks to jaclaz, Post #19 in this selfsame thread) settles it. You two rock!

[leena]

I want to refer to the sourcecode of the ramdisk,who has it?can you give it to me?

[was_jaclaz]

I want to refer to the sourcecode of the ramdisk,who has it?can you give it to me?

I don't think that latest versions Source Code is available.
thunn at the time did manage to find it and made some changes to it.
You may want to PM him and ask him if he is willing to share the source or giving you a link ot he one he found.

BTW, leena does seem like a "strange" nick for a member coming from Afghanistan
Just in case, please read here:
http://www.boot-land...?...ic=3153&hl=




jaclaz

[Kirkx]

- Windows XP SP3 Home, 4 GB RAM
- AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.19 GHz
- Gavotte Ramdisk ver 1.0.4096.5
- RRamdisk size: 768 MB
http://img34.imagesh...42009222054.png
http://img27.imagesh...42009224740.png
http://img44.imagesh...42009174642.png

I've just upgraded my Gavotte Ramdisk to ver 1.0.4096.5_200811130 (I assume it's the latest one) and have two questions.

1) In the past I've been using an older version with the following batch command, run at Windows startup to switch the file system of ramdisk to NTFS:

FORMAT R: /FS:NTFS /V:RamDisk /Q /A:512 /FORCE

After switching to the new version I ran file "ram4g.reg" once. This apparently adds a parameter in Windows registry which tells the driver to use PAE to push the ramdisk into non-addressable area of RAM.

Is there any new parameter that should be added to the above command to make sure that PEA mode is applied to the ramdisk? It looks like there isn't any new switch needed (I don't see anything in Readme.txt) and ramdisk seems to be accessing non addressable area without problems. I would appreciate confirmation.

2) Has anyone tried running Gavotte with /3GB switch in Boot.ini to increase the amount of RAM available for applications. I have lots of free memory (about 2.5 GB) and don't need to do it, but I'm just curious, wondering if there aren't any unexpected conflicts.

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP SP3 with /3GB" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /3GB

C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

On my end there doesn't seem to be any clear advantage, there is a bit more free memory left under the full system load with /3GB turned on:

A) minimal system load - default Boot.ini
http://img26.imagesh...42009175818.png

Bb) minimal system load - Boot.ini with /3GB
http://img269.images...42009212811.png

C) full system load - default Boot.ini
http://img7.imagesha...42009205239.png

D) full system load - Boot.ini with /3GB
http://img20.imagesh...42009212538.png

[Kirkx]

What steps should be taken to check if your hardware is fully compatible with ramdisk installed using PAE, to avoid possible problems down the road.

The concept of PAE in this case could be summed up as follows:

"36 bit PAE extensions increase the available pool of memory. PAE enbaled on a 32 bit Windows XP or Vista system with 4 GB of RAM should let your OS use all 4 GB, although there might be problems, depending on the BIOS, mother board chipset, CPU etc."

[jefimija]

"There are two things I will not use without knowing where they came from: A toothbrush and a program."

Thanks to this rule, I have never had a virus on my pc in 20+ years (yes, I'm that old.) So, to get to the point:

Who writes "Gavotte's RRamdisk" and how in the %$#@!* do I know I can trust any of the 3 gazillion version referenced in this thread???



btw this is not my real id

[was_jaclaz]

Who writes "Gavotte's RRamdisk"

A chinese guy, that goes with the nick of lyh728.

and how in the %$#@!* do I know I can trust any of the 3 gazillion version referenced in this thread???

You don't know , that is actually the interesting part:

Life is "trying things to see if they work"

btw this is not my real id

Well, that's allright , since I am not jaclaz, but the unrecognized grandson of Groucho Marx, Booto Marx , and rather obviously lyh728 is actually a retired, middle-aged saleswoman from Peoria, Texas, of hispanic origins, whose exact identity I cannot reveal for obvious privacy reasons.



jaclaz

[Kirkx]

I've been using Gavotte v1.0.4096.5 (768 MB, fixed media) every day for a few months now:

http://img130.images...12009070841.png

Most of the time everything runs flawlessly but about once a month Windows XP shuts down with a stop error:

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

Because this is memory related error Gavotte is a prime suspect. Any ideas how to diagnose the problem would be appreciated. When I googled:

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA Gavotte RAM Disk

there were two pages returned with one thread in German and a few in Chinese, not much help in my case.

---------
Gavotte v1.0.4096.5 (768 MB, fixed media), PC RAM: 4 GB, Windows XP-SP3 Home

[Kirkx]

I think the problem described in the previous post has been resolved. It seems to have been caused by registry cleaner module of the latest version of JV16 Power Tools 2009:

http://www.macecraft.com/

The cleaner used with default settings apparently messes up some registry keys used by Gavotte, as a result it's not even possible to uninstall RAM drive. After partition C was restored from disk image, RAM disk installs/uninstalls w/o problems and there are no more stop errors.

[Lancelot]

Hi Kirkx,
thanks for sharing your findings.
I know "Registry Cleaners" are responsible for mannny issues. After having some trouble loong time ago never used them again.
I believe your post about "Gavotte's RRamdisk" + "Registry Cleaner" issue will make many people on internet happy.

Thanks again

[Kirkx]

I actually use two registry cleaners every day, but they are not very aggressive (CCleaner and EasyCleaner), I also use an older version of Registry Mechanic occasionally, and I compact registry with NtRegOpt daily.

Jv16 cleaner, however, seems to be a different beast, at first run it found over 1000 registry errors which other three cleaners apparently missed. You could of course spend a few nights on their user forums and try to tweak it to make it more Gavotte friendly, but I won't bother with that, uninstalling Jv16 is much easier.

[Kirkx]

Uninstalling JV16 didn't solve the problem for too long, BSOD appeared again. At this point I decided to try SuperSpeed RAM Disk Plus (with PAE enabled) but it didn't make any difference. Quick analysis with WinDbg.exe clearly pointed to "memory corruption":

http://img684.images...52010050115.png

http://img684.images...52010050151.png

Disabling PAE was the next obvious step and it finally seems to have resolved the issue with BSODs. I went back to Gavotte and I'm running it like a standard RAM disk, without PAE.

This would indicate that my ageing hardware won't work under PAE:

- chipset: AMD Athlon 64 3500+
- motherboard A8AE-LE = Amberine M-GL6E
- BIOS: v3.15
- RAM: 4 GB (4 x Kingston KVR 400 /1GR /DDR, PC 3200, 400 MHz/)

The confusing part about all this is that memory corruption didn't happen right away. I was running Gavotte in PAE mode with exactly the same applications long hours every day for about a month before the first BSOD popped up. After that first instance there was peace and quiet for another week or two and then BSODs started to happen more often.

The conclusion seems to be that if you have a PC which only supports DDR1 RAM (which will be max 4 GB) do not use PAE. PAE should only be used on newer computers which support DDR2 and can have 6 or 8 GB of RAM installed. Of course this conclusion can be completely wrong.

A side effect of my experiments is write-hd-to-ram-disk speed comparison between Gavotte and SuperSpeed RAM Disk Plus. On my system Gavotte is definitely faster (I don't use the image file but batch files to copy data from HD to Ram disk). On the other hand, if your hardware supports PAE then SuperSpeed might be a better choice, it's GUI is far superior, you can quickly turn on or off PAE mode (they call it "unmanaged memory") from GUI and there are some stats showing right away:

http://img5.imagesha...52010053337.png

http://img51.imagesh...52010053513.png

http://img51.imagesh...52010053523.png

[L A M A]

Uninstalling JV16 didn't solve the problem for too long, BSOD appeared again. At this point I decided to try SuperSpeed RAM Disk Plus (with PAE enabled) but it didn't make any difference. Quick analysis with WinDbg.exe clearly pointed to "memory corruption":

http://img684.images...52010050115.png

http://img684.images...52010050151.png

Disabling PAE was the next obvious step and it finally seems to have resolved the issue with BSODs. I went back to Gavotte and I'm running it like a standard RAM disk, without PAE.

This would indicate that my ageing hardware won't work under PAE:

- chipset: AMD Athlon 64 3500+
- motherboard A8AE-LE = Amberine M-GL6E
- BIOS: v3.15
- RAM: 4 GB (4 x Kingston KVR 400 /1GR /DDR, PC 3200, 400 MHz/)

The confusing part about all this is that memory corruption didn't happen right away. I was running Gavotte in PAE mode with exactly the same applications long hours every day for about a month before the first BSOD popped up. After that first instance there was peace and quiet for another week or two and then BSODs started to happen more often.

The conclusion seems to be that if you have a PC which only supports DDR1 RAM (which will be max 4 GB) do not use PAE. PAE should only be used on newer computers which support DDR2 and can have 6 or 8 GB of RAM installed. Of course this conclusion can be completely wrong.

A side effect of my experiments is write-hd-to-ram-disk speed comparison between Gavotte and SuperSpeed RAM Disk Plus. On my system Gavotte is definitely faster (I don't use the image file but batch files to copy data from HD to Ram disk). On the other hand, if your hardware supports PAE then SuperSpeed might be a better choice, it's GUI is far superior, you can quickly turn on or off PAE mode (they call it "unmanaged memory") from GUI and there are some stats showing right away:

http://img5.imagesha...52010053337.png

http://img51.imagesh...52010053513.png

http://img51.imagesh...52010053523.png

You know, you just described the whole thing happened to me few months ago, i had my doubts that its my aging RAM or but later I kept guessing that it might have something to do with SuperSpeed's unManaged function. The only difference between your problem and mine is that you used Gavotte' PAE feature while I used SuperSpeed's instead. After reading this, I'm quite sure something is really wrong with "PAE" itself.

2 of my DDR2 512 (1GB RAM) tasted garbage bags already. Apparently, retail shops tell me I've warranty of 1 year while the official Kingston's warranty document say "Lifetime warranty". I don't know who's fault it is, faulty memory installed by my OEM or PAE but if these new RAM sticks (8GB) gets spoiled, it can become difficult for me to contact Kingston guys...


EDIT: If my current RAM sticks gets spoiled (due to Grub4Dos + PAE features) after few months, I'll let this thread know about it...
EDIT2: On the second thought if this really is the case, maybe if PAE apps (Grub4DOS, Gavotte's, SuperSpeed's etc) use random locations upon roboot for small images, then it may help lower the wear out of physical RAM, again "Of course this conclusion can be completely wrong." as kirkx put it.

[xclimbing]

About the Rramdisk by gavotte, the offcial release is in this thread on the CCF forum(In Chinese, Rinrin metioned above):
https://bbs.et8.net/...ad.php?t=906641

the newest version is 1.0.4096.5(11.12.2008 released).Because CCF forum is not a open forum. You cannot download the attachment without a membership. I uploaded the 1.0.4095.5 version to here.

The update information in Chinese:

1. ramdisk过大导致NTFS格式化映像文件无效(1.0.4096.2) : I have no idea of it.
2. 加强初始化清零(1.0.4096.3) : Enhanced zero the ram disk on init.
3. 通过卷标查看是否使用高内存(1.4096.5) : Using or not the High Memory ( > 4G ) by checking the volume name of ram disk.
4. 修正部分ASUS主板兼容问题(1.4096.5): fixing compitable problem with some ASUS mainboard.

Sorry for my Chinglish.

Climbing

[Kirkx]

The download link to v1.0.4096.5 is also available in post #36:

http://www.boot-land...amp;#entry52696