Instructions for installing the spss 2. for Windows, including the minimum hardware and software requirements, are located in the

Using data sets with a large number of cases in the Data Editor - When data are read in to SPSS, memory is allocated in the Data Editor to accommodate all of the cases. If a very large data file (millions of cases) is opened (even when connected to an SPSS Server) it is possible that the computer running SPSS for Windows will run out of virtual memory.
The number of cases that can be held in memory by the Data Editor can be limited by a special setting This threshold can be set by using the virtualr.exe utility, which is located in the SPSS installation directory. The default is to allocate memory for up to 100,000 cases as needed. If a Data Editor-specific operation is used to pass the threshold, such as scrolling to the end of a large file, memory for all of the cases will be allocated.
The threshold setting does not affect the ability to carry out any operations in SPSS for Windows, but it may affect performance with large datasets. You should not change the default unless you have memory exhaustion problems. In that case, set a smaller value using VirtualR.

Caching data - The Database Wizard and the Text Wizard provide an optional setting that automatically caches the data that they import. By default caching is on and the wizards create a copy of the entire dataset. If you turn caching off, SPSS does not have access to the entire data file -- the original data source is re-read as needed -- and the total number cases is unknown. When the total number of cases is unknown, Go to Case, Copy, and Paste do not work as expected in the Data Editor. You can correct the problem by turning caching on.