Possible Windows 2.11 Bug

[LangsamSpieler]

When i start Windows 2.11 with Win386, a error is coming with too high memory. When i start Windows 2.11 with Win86, Windows sucessfully starts up but it show a error in the Startscreen with the high Memory, but Windows can run sucessfully.

[Overdoze]

It's far more likely you simply haven't configured your memory properly in DOS.

[LangsamSpieler]

With how may memory are Windows 2.11 work?

[TheCollector1988]

You need himem.sys iirc and a side note, you need a true DOS environment (not DOSBox if on emulation).

[xelloss]

IIRC Windows 2.x tries to make the high memory area (HMA) available to its programs; MS-DOS >= 5.0 tries to load itself in the HMA when the DOS=HIGH directive is included in config.sys, which results in Windows 2.x complaining about an incorrect memory configuration.

Probably, to run Windows 2.x you should also avoid loading HIMEM.SYS, as this was only introduced a few years later. I think Windows/386 2.1x comes with its own built-in memory driver, which emulates expanded memory backed by extended memory, without the need to load HIMEM or EMM386.

To be on the safe side, remove any HIMEM, EMM386, DOS=HIGH (and/or DOS=UMB) from config.sys, then install Windows/386 2.11. The installation program will make changes to config.sys if needed.

[dfawcus]

Ignoring the 386 VMM version.

For 2.10/2.11 there are two versions of USER userf.exe and users.exe, the former is expected to be used with the HMA available, the latter when it is not available. At setup time you get the choice as to which will be used (it may not explicitly mention those names).

It can also make use of Expanded Memory (EMM) for swapping, preferably EEMS (EMS 4.0), with as much conventional memory as possible back filled.

So you need HIMEM (or some other HMA provider) to allow for it to place USER there, and nothing else (including DOS) must be using the HMA. To provide EEMS you'll need an appropriate provider (say EMM386) as needed to match the emulation being provided.

[Battler]

EMM386 needs at least C800-CFFF free in order to successfully allocate EMS pages. If you're using a virtualizer, they tend to use a video BIOS which is bigger than 32 kB (so going quite past CFFF:000F), and fill D000-EFFF with option ROM's, making EMM386 virtually unusable. QEMU kind of does the same, and even makes non-assigned memory mappings return 0x00 instead of the correct 0xFF, which means that even if the memory is free, HIMEM and EMM386 will not consider it such and not use it unless you specifically include that memory with I= in EMM386's command line.
This is why PCem and 86Box are recommended (as is PCE), as you have the guarantee of C800-DFFF free (D000-DFFF if using AT MFM or any XT hard disk controller, as they need their ROM at C800) and on most boards, also E000-EFFF (on all boards actually, but on some boards, the buggy BIOS'es leave a leftover of the compressed BIOS data at E000-EFFF, which can be safely overwritten, but EMM386 needs to have the I=E000-EFFF parameter added).