Bad RAM Causes Fatal Exception Errors Running Windows 95/98

CAUSE

• All operating systems use memory differently. In Windows 3.1, the "bad" memory may be used for holding rarely used data. In Windows, the "bad" memory is used for holding frequently run program information.
• Windows 3.1 contains comparatively little 32-bit code. Windows uses much more 32-bit code. Furthermore, there are subtle differences between the way memory is accessed if it is being accessed for code or if it being accessed for data. Because Windows runs much more 32-bit code, these subtle errors show up more often.
  
  In particular, all the 32-bit code in Windows 3.1 resides in one place: at the low-end of physical memory. If the first 4 megabytes (MB) of memory can handle 32-bit code, Windows 3.1 works without errors. This is true even if the topmost physical memory cannot run 32-bit code because Windows 3.1 does not run 32-bit code outside the first 4 MB of RAM.
  
  Windows runs 32-bit code in all portions of memory. Therefore, when Windows runs 32-bit code in a section of RAM that cannot run 32-bit code well, you may receive "Fatal Exception Error 0x:xxxxxxxx" error messages.
• Windows interacts with hardware differently than previous versions of Windows. This is due partly to Plug and Play and partly to new drivers that take advantage of the additional capabilities of interface adapters. These features may uncover anomalies in the hardware that never appeared in previous versions of Windows because earlier versions did not attempt to exploit these features.

• Many new computers do not have memory chips that perform parity checking; therefore, you may have been encountering parity errors in Windows 3.1 without realizing it because the errors were in relatively harmless sections of memory. For example, in a Microsoft Word for Windows document, the word "the" is changed to "tie."