>I've always worked on the principle of bigger is better :-)
>

That's certainly not the case for lots of things - making BUFFERS too large moves them from the HMA (the first 64K above the 1MB mark) into conventional memory, and putting too much physical RAM in a machine can dramatically slow things - for example, Slot1 processors, while able to address a 1GB physical RAM address space can only cache locations in the first 512MB; this means that memory above that will not be cached, so each memory access actually does a read from RAM, much slower than the speed of cache. An even more extreme example of this was Intel's 430TX chipset for the Pentium MMX/Socket 7 market; ot could address 512MB, but only cache addresses in the 1s4 64MB. THis was very painful for NT, which allocates memory 'top down'. It was not uncommon for users to complain of dramatic slowdowns when adding an additional 64MB of RAM, because the L2 cache was effectively disabled (L2 cache is a faster intermediary block of memory used to hold recently referenced data and code blocks - it can typically be accessed several times faster than standard RAM, and if programs exhibit localized behavior - postulating that if you reference a memory location now, it's likely that location or another close to it will be referenced within the near future - holding a few recently-referenced blocks of memory in cache can reduce the delay in accessing the data. The same concepts apply to file I/O - you hold recently/frequently referenced information in memory rather than on disk because you can get to it faster.) Other examples of more not being better in our environment include overallocating swap files resulting in excessive swap activity, or too large a packet size on a TCP/IP connection (one of the best tweak tricks for speeding an internet connection is adjusting from a packet size optimized for the LAN environment to one that is better suited to a WAN environment, a trick exploited by many of the shareware Internet performance boost products.

>I have not used either setup files for the last 3 years though as I found that it conflicted with Win9x. If DOS settings are required then it should be configured within a DOS session.
>

I don't believe that Win9x allows you to adjust the open file settings for individual DOS VDMs - NT allows a custom CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to be established through each DOS app's PIF.

>I'll keep it in mind though.
>
>
>
>>>Try and avoid Autoexec.bat and config.sys where possible. This normally introduces more problems with Windows that it solves. The reason for there being is that they set up the DOS environment, which unless your playing DOS games on a regular basis, I would question why you would need them at all.
>>>

Other things belong in CONFIG.SYS - if you need to adjust the size of the environment string space, you still need the COMSPEC setting; some non-PnP devices require precision setting to avoid memory conflicts in the UMB area, and AUTOEXEC for setting global environment variables for things like Brief and Clipper, antivirus software, and the odd real-mode device driver.

>>>If you need them, then fine - say 200 and 50 are as good as any other values... There would be memory allocated as you increase these values, but that is not normally a problem these days :-)
>>>
>>
>>The buffers setting you recommend is far from correct - this would force bufferspace to be allocated from conventional memory in each instance of a VDM. A buffers value of 8 should be sufficient; the only place it has any effect in Win9x is in the boot of the underlying DOS before Win9x initiates its kernel.
>>
>>>If possible, just rename the extensions of autoexec and config and restart the computer. It will probably be more stable. (Fewer memory conflicts etc)
>>>
>>>Hope this helps
>>>
>>>Jason
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hi, everyone
>>>>
>>>>i had a FP2.6(DOS) system in my PC. i access it from Window98
>>>>(call up a DOS mode window). At the first i call it a message
>>>>appear on screen 'too many file open', so i add a CONFIG.SYS at
>>>>C:\ ( FILES=100 & BUFFERS=30 ). the system can run, now.
>>>>Q1. is't the best way to add a CONFIG.SYS for start up Window98
>>>> (maybe not good for another Window application)
>>>>Q2. i try to right-click on MAIN.BAT and find some information
>>>> about MS-DOS mode setting....is't better then form a CONFIG.SYS
>>>>Q3. What is the bast value for FILES & BUFFERS