One of my PCs has just developed a problem where it will only boot in Windows Safe Mode and even then it takes a very long time to boot up. Should I then try a restart, the PC stops in mid boot-up with a message saying that it is having trouble initializing Device VCACHE. The PC is a Pentium 100 running Win 98 SE. Hope you can help.

For readers who are wondering what VCACHE is, it is the disk caching system in Windows which stores the most recently accessed data in the RAM cache. This is to speed up access times, as it takes longer to access data from the hard drive than it takes to access data from the RAM. The error that you are experiencing could be caused by a number of factors and some do take a lot of work to resolve. However, if you have installed new RAM into your computer, then the RAM could either be the wrong type for compatibility with your computer or simply a bad RAM stick. If you have recently installed some new RAM into your computer, I suggest you take it back to the place of purchase and ask them to test the RAM stick(s) for you and double check the possibility that the RAM is not compatible with your computer.