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- ID:XD Discussion of XDV
- Quarterdeck Technical Note
- by Bob Perry
-
- Q. Why does XDV hang my system, but DV works all right?
-
- Q. Why can't I run large memory size programs with DV?
-
- XDV is the command to start DESQview. You should type XDV at
- the DOS prompt, or modify your AUTOEXEC.BAT file so it runs XDV. This
- command allows DESQview to "see" and use all of the memory you have
- installed in your machine. If you choose to type and run DV instead of
- XDV, your memory sizes for programs will drop significantly because
- DESQview cannot "hide" itself in high RAM, if you have any. Thus as
- much as 224K of DESQview overhead will come out of your conventional
- memory. Running a program larger than 384K may be impossible if your
- system does not have more than 640K of RAM.
-
- Infrequently users experience a system "hang up" running XDV,
- but DV works (although memory sizes aren't as large as expected with
- XDV). This most often takes place on systems where XDV tries to map
- itself into memory areas it has detected as being available in the
- Reserved Area. The Reserved Area lies above 640K and below 1024K (1
- Megabyte) and is generally used by video adapters, network cards, and
- other devices. In the case of a "hang" it could be because XDV has
- put some code into an open area of memory which is later actually used
- by one of the peripheral devices on your system.
-
- One type of video adapter made by various manufacturers is known
- as an "auto switching" or automatic mode switching. BE SURE YOU HAVE
- DISABLED THE AUTOSWITCH ON YOUR VIDEO CARD, if you have one. Auto-
- switching video cards have physical switches on the video adapter
- which must be disabled in order to run XDV. Some rare video cards
- have a software selectable autoswitch option which also must be
- disabled.
-
- Users of high resolution video cards, peripheral devices, or
- network cards such as the Token Ring adapter may find that their
- peripheral cards cause XDV to hang the system. This problem is solved
- by using an exclusion parameter on their memory manager. The
- exclusion parameter should exclude those areas of high RAM used by the
- peripheral device, and their hexadecimal address range is best
- obtained from the manual (or the vendor) of the device.
-
- EEMS (AST RAMpage, etc) users should normally disable mother-
- board memory and backfill from the EEMS board. If by some error in
- installation motherboard memory is not disabled, but backfilling is
- enabled anyhow, XDV may cause a hang.
-
- Copyright (C) 1990 by Quarterdeck Office Systems
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