BackMaster Considerations with OS/2 WARP v3.0 1.) BMRecover Boot Floppy Creation Process Fails The BackMaster disaster recovery boot disk creation utility, BMRecover, does not work under WARP. The boot disk creation utility, IBM's BOOTOS2, has recently been modified to support OS/2 WARP v3.0. This file is available on MSR Developments BBS system [(409)560-5970] and also on CompuServe in the MSR Development file directory [GO MSRDEV / OS/2 BVEN SECTION #7]. 2.) Error 69 : Unable to Allocate Memory and Other Memory Considerations Some people with 8 Megabyte systems have some memory problems with WARP. There may be some sections of memory which are marked as being used when they are actually free. When the BackMaster device driver requests memory, the driver is told that there is no memory available. Device drivers and caches take up RAM and you only have a limited amount of RAM to use on an 8 megabyte system. There are several things that you can look at to optimize your memory usage under WARP. They are as follows : 1.) If you are using a standard ISA, EISA, or VESA system, the driver IBM2FLPY.ADD is unnecessary on your system and should be remarked out or deleted from the config.sys entirely. This driver should only be needed for Microchannel machines. 2.) If you have installed WARP from CD, then the device driver XDFLOPPY.FLT may be remarked out of the config.sys. This driver adds support for the 1.88 megabyte diskettes that IBM uses for the installation diskettes. The first two diskettes (the only two used for CD installation) are standard 1.44 megabyte disks. Therefore, if you have installed from CD, the XDFLOPPY.FLT driver will not be of any benefit to you and may be remarked out or deleted. 3.) OS/2 WARP has increased the standard sizes of the HPFS cache. On an 8 megabyte system, you may see some problems trying to use a 1024K cache with your HPFS. The HPFS cache was set to 64K standard in OS/2 version 2.1 and 2.11, and reducing the size, or even eliminating, the HPFS cache under WARP may free up the necessary memory. 4.) OS/2 WARP has also increased the DISKCACHE statement from 512K to 1024K in some cases. You may want to consider lowering this cache to the standard 512K that was used in OS/2 2.1 and 2.11 or even lowering this to 64K. 5.) There are many more drivers available to load in OS/2 WARP than in previous versions of OS/2. Not all of these drivers may be necessary. For instance, during a full install of WARP, the Multimedia Presentation Manager drivers are installed. If you do not own any multimedia equipment (i.e. a Sound Blaster or CD-ROM), then these drivers are unnecessary and can be removed. OS/2 WARP also contains TCP/IP drivers which you may not need. OS/2 WARP also comes with FaxWorks. You may want to consider not loading this driver if you do not normally use your FaxWorks Software. You will have to consider for your own system what is and is not necessary. On some 8 megabyte systems, it may be impossible to load all of this and have the necessary physical RAM. If you feel you need to load MMPM, TCP/IP, have large diskcaches, you will run into problems under WARP with or without BackMaster and you may want to consider buying more memory. 6.) In some cases, increasing the default size of your SWAP file can improve system performance. By preallocating disk space for the swap file, you can improve virtual memory performance by assuring the virtual memory is available immediately when needed thus reducing the number of times the SWAP file must be extended and therefore reducing SWAP file fragmentation. To change your default SWAP size, you will want to modify the SWAPPATH statement in your config.sys. The SWAPPATH statement has two numbers directly after the statement. These numbers are, respectively, the default swapper file size, and the second number is the amount of room to leave free on the drive. Increasing the default size of the SWAP file to about 12-16 megabytes will make sure that the SWAP file is less fragmented. This will also insure that the system will have the resources it needs upon bootup and will not need to expand the SWAP file as often.