Saving Memory with TSRs and Windows 3.0

• Microsoft Windows operating system versions 3.0, 3.0a

SUMMARY

You may experience problems running Microsoft Windows version 3.0 when conventional memory or environment space is low. One way to save memory is to avoid the use of TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) programs. If this is not possible, you can still save memory by invoking TSRs from the CONFIG.SYS file (when possible) or at the BEGINNING of the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

MORE INFORMATION

Each program loaded into memory gets a copy of the environment (the PATH, PROMPT, and other variables that you set). The more programs loaded in this manner, the more conventional memory used. If TSRs are loaded before setting any environmental variables, the memory used by the TSR is reduced by the amount of space usually taken by the environment string. This memory is rounded to the nearest 16 bytes.

NOTE: If the PATH is set after TSRs are loaded, full path names must be used.

REFERENCES

"Microsoft Windows User's Guide", version 3.00, pages 442-443 and pages 515-519