China DOS Union

I was helping a classmate install the system. After repartitioning and formatting, when installing ME under pure DOS it said there wasn't enough conventional memory. I suspected a virus,
but when I booted with a Kv3000 boot disk and ran Kv3000, it also said there wasn't enough memory. Before that, I hadn't done any other operations.
Later, with no other choice, I used a different Windme CD and the installation succeeded.
I don't know what the reason was. Could it be related to the CD-ROM drive? (His drive's disc-reading ability is extremely poor)
Also, when he was using Win98 before, only 40% of memory resources were available.

I don't know what the reason is, hoping an expert can point it out!

Then you need to configure conventional memory a bit, for example load HMA and UMB, use better drivers, and so on. For the specific methods, see the site's "Using DOS" section.

What boot disk did you use at the beginning to install it?
Under pure DOS you can only use 1MB of memory (640K conventional memory and 384K upper memory), and extended memory can only be used by paging it into conventional memory, so if too many programs are loaded into memory when DOS starts up (mainly because too many auto-processing files are loaded in the autoexec.bat settings), then when you install WINME you'll get insufficient memory.
Check the autoexec.bat file on your boot disk and see whether it has DOSKEY.COM or SMARTDRV in it; remove them.

Actually there's no need to remove DOSKEY, SMARTDRV, and the like. As long as it is configured well, there won't be any problem. For example, on my computer, even with DOSKEY, SMARTDRV, and so on loaded, there are still 630K of conventional memory and more than 100K of UMB left.

Right, it really was because he hadn't configured it properly. The boot disk I made also loads DOSKEY, SAMRTDRV, and other programs, yet installing the WINDOWS system works fine. But with the original Wuyou Boot version, the phenomenon that this friend mentioned does appear.
However, you can't possibly teach him that much all at once, so telling him to delete DOSKEY and SMARTDRV was the simplest method. After all, those two files are useless when installing WINME, but if you're installing WIN2000 then you definitely have to keep SMARTDRV.
If the friend in the top post wants to learn more, then do as WENGIER said (the method in reply #2).

I really don't know how the original Wuyou Boot version was made. The quality is only average, yet it's promoted everywhere. But I haven't tried it myself.

That's right, I'm using Wuyou Boot, and it works very well for me. No problems.
My floppy drive is broken, so I can't make a boot disk myself and can only boot from CD.

Then what should be done? The boot disk is already made. Nothing can be changed anymore.

Is there any command that can free up memory?