# So...what's a vcache?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-a-vcache/87952>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 17, 2001, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-a-vcache/87952 "2001-10-17T11:30:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mickazee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Mickazee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mickazee)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2001, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-a-vcache/87952/1 "2001-10-17T11:30:54Z")

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Last lasturday I purchased the 1.2Ghz Athlon, motherboard, RAM, GeForce 2 and a 40Gig hard drive with the intention of upgrading my parents machine.

As it turned out, the GeForce 2 (and supposedely motherboard) was screwed and I got that replaced today. The thing is, it’s still ‘blue screening of death’ like crazy.

I’ve installed the motherboard drivers, upgraded the BIOS and still it’s 'bsod’ing. More noticably when I hook up the old 12 gig hard drive to copy stuff over, only minutes into the transfer it crashes.

What’s interesting about these ‘crashes’ is that Windows whinges about ‘vcache’. What is it?

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**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2001, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-a-vcache/87952/2 "2001-10-17T12:45:17Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> A disk cache (also called Virtual Cache or just simply vcache in Win95/98) is important for improving hard disk performance. This is because the disk cache caches or stores data from the hard disk in the much faster RAM so that if a program requires that piece of data, it can just access the disk cache for it, instead of loading from the hard disk.

[link](http://www.rojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/Disk_Cache_Optimization/Disk_Cache_Optimization_01.htm)

[fixed link]

[Edited by bibliophage on 10-17-2001 at 02:26 PM]

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**Author:** ![Hirka\_T\_Bawa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/db5fbb/32.png) [@Hirka\_T\_Bawa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hirka_T_Bawa)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2001, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-a-vcache/87952/3 "2001-10-17T13:18:38Z")

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How much RAM did you put in the computer? I have a AMD Athlon 1gig on a ABIT K-7 RAID mother board. When I upgraded from 128 megs of ram to 768 megs (hey, it was on sale, why not?) I had problems with the Vcashe. Seems the Vcashe can’t support more then 512 megs of RAM. Was having all sorts of problems, including the “Blue Screen of Death.”

One major clue that is the problem is to try and open a DOS window, it was giving me errors. If that is the problem, go into the system.ini file and limit the Vcashe to 512 megs of ram. Just add the line: vcashe MaxFileCache=524288 That should fix the problem.