From: STeve Andre' (andres_at_msu.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 06 2001 - 12:52:04 EDT
Win95, Win98 and WinME all do insane things with the swap file. The
default is for Windows to play with the swap file size, dynamically
resizing it as needed.
This is a wonderful idea in theory, but in practice it reeks. Windows
picks the damndest times to change the swap file, often in the
wrong direction only to have to do it again. Ever hear a bunch of disk
noise when you can't see any reason for disk activity? That's Windows
playing with its swap file...
The BEST thing to do in terms of stability is to make your swap file
static--take control away from windows, set it to some fairly large
size, like 256M for medium use, or 512M for folks who use lots of
stuff at once. Windows will give you a warning that western
civilization may fail when you do this, but ignore it. To really improve
things, get Norton Utilities and rearrange the disk, putting the swap
file at the beginning of the disk. It will then be one non-changing
contiguous chunk of disk.
If you do this, you'll never have the case of the mysteriously growing
swap file to deal with, and you'll have a more stable system to boot.
A fragmented swap file is a disaster to deal with, frequently causing
programs to crash as they exit.
--STeve Andre'
At 09:44 AM 4/6/01 -0300, Doug Martell wrote:
>Good morning,
>
>I have a i1452 Thinkpad / win98 / with a 4.5 Gig drive split into C: of
>2 Gigs and D: having the remaining 2.5 Gigs. I have tried to keep at
>least 100 Megs of free space on the C drive to keep the system from
>bogging down. Over the last several months its been shrinking in spite
>of my cleanup attempts ... to the point that there is only 38 Megs
>available post startup. I've noticed there is a very sizable win386.swp
>file which is growing in size. About a month ago it was around 49 Megs
>and today it's at 70 Megs.
>
>Does this sound like its could be virus related and if so what should I
>do to salvage the thinkpad?
>
>Is there a way to reduce the size of this swp file without compromising
>the stability or ability of the computer?
>
>
>Doug - Laidback We "R" Inc.
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