Virtual Memory I/O Error and 2 MS Office Errors

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Virtual Memory I/O Error and 2 MS Office Errors

My computer is a B&W 350 mHz G3 Revision 2 with 512 MB of memory (4-128 MB memory modules). The hard drives are a Maxtor 6.03 GB ATA which I think is original and a Seagate Medalist 13032 12.13 GB ATA. They are stacked one above the other. The 6 GB drive has OSX 10.3.9 installed and the 12 GB drive has two 6 GB partitions. OS 9.2.2 is installed on one of them (copied from a Beige G3). I deleted the profile folder in the system folder so everything in that folder is new. MS Word and MS Excel are from Office 98.

I am still getting three error messages that could possibly be related.

1) If I try to start the computer with Virtual Memory On, I get the following error message:

"Sorry, a system error occurred, Virtual Memory I/O error. To temporarily turn off extensions, restart and hold down the shift key." If I turn off virtual memory, the computer starts and runs fine, but I still get the two error messages below. I haven't found anything that indicates virtual memory cannot be turned on with 512 M of installed memory. (VM Available 5086 M, Built in 512 M, After restart 513 M).

2) If I try to start up MS Word with Virtual Memory Off, I get the following error message:

"The Visual Basic Editor could not be loaded. There may not be enough free memory to load the libraries or files may have been deleted or moved from their originally installed locations." Word opens after I close the error box.(Suggested memory 13,623, Minimum 40,000, Preferred 80,000)

3) Excel starts up, but when I select Tools>Macros>Visual Basic Editor, I get the following error message: "VBGA Extensibility Library (1) could not be loaded" and then "Out of Memory" when I close the first error box. (The same error occured when I set Minimum to 80,000 and Preferred to 160,000)

Just for perspective, I have Word set at Minimum 15,000, Preferred 15,000 and Excel at Minimum 20,000 and Preferred at 20,000 on my Beige G3 with 384 MB of memory and have had no problems with virtual memory turned on. I have some pretty large spreadsheets and word processing documents on the Beige G3.

Does anyone have any ideas that might help eliminate these error messages?

Thank you very much,

Dean

B&W G3-OTHER, Mac OS 9.2.x

Posted on Mar 27, 2013 8:19 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Neville Hillyer

Level 4

1,879 points

Mar 28, 2013 2:04 PM in response to deanfromfergus falls

After moving OS 9 between Macs I usually found it best to run an OS updater over it again.

Better still do a full install after erasing the disk - downside is that applications will have to be reinstalled.

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Answer 2

Mar 31, 2013 6:10 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

Your suggestions might have solved my problem if I would have had the hardware set up properly. It turns out that if you have two hard drives installed in a B&W G3, OS9 has to be installed on the first partition of the master drive and the master drive must be installed on the bottom of the stack so it's the first drive accessed by the computer. At least that seems to have worked in my situation.

My intent was to install the system on the larger drive so I could copy a backup of my data from my primary computer to this computer once a month or so as a backup. My thought was that if a power supply failed on the B&W, I could just put its master hard drive in our other B&W or my Beige G3 - neither of which can handle two drives. I will probably use the second drive as a secondary backup for pictures and other non-critical files. The smaller drive was originally installed as the lower and master drive. I thought just changing the jumpers on the two drives to swich the master and slave settings would save me the time and trouble of physically removing the drives. It wound up costing me a lot of time and trouble.

Thank you for your response.

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Answer 3

Apr 1, 2013 2:26 AM in response to deanfromfergus falls

If I remember correctly the beige G3 shipped with internal cables for 4 drives. One pair for the main ATA disk plus a slave and the other pair for the CD reader plus a spare. All four could be used for hard disks although one pair may have been SCSI. There was also an external SCSI connection.

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