PC Compatibility Card & NetBEUI Issue

When using the 12-inch PC Compatibility Card in the PC environment, it crashes when transferring a large data set of files or one large file to a WindowsNT 3.51 or 4.0 server via NetBEUI. Below are some of the symptoms:
  • Windows 3.11 hangs in File Manager when copying large set of files or one large file to an NT server.
  • A DOS session run within Windows crashes with an "internal stack overflow, system halted" when copying files to NT server.
  • The problem is not consistent with size or number of files but generally will crash after transferring more than 2 MB of data.
This occurs due to the STACKS line in the CONFIG.SYS file. The usual default stacks statement is:

STACKS=9,256

To fix this, simply increase the stacks statement as follows:

STACKS=64,512

This will solve your NetBEUI problem. By including STACKS=64,512 in your config.sys file you are allocating more memory than you really need.


This article was published in the 27 May 1997 "Information Alley".
Published Date: Feb 18, 2012