A swap file is used by your computer to supplement the PC’s memory. The operating system copies as much data as possible into main memory and leaves the rest on the swap file, a cache of data on your hard drive. When the computer runs out of memory, it uses a swap file. The swap file came in handy during the days when 32MB of RAM was standard. Today, most computers comes with at least 64MB of RAM, and systems with 128MB or 256MB are common. For use on systems with more than 128MB RAM, the hard disk-based swap file is not needed as much. Using a swap file means your hard drive is in use, which is slower than accessing data in memory. If you minimize the use of the swap file, you’ll see a small performance gain — not a drastic improvement, but a slight improvement. If you have more than 128 megabytes of memory, there’s really no reason to rely on a swap file. When you have lots of RAM, you can optimize the use of your swap file. This procedure optimizes use of the swap file in Windows 98. Open Notepad or any text editor. Click on the File menu, and select Open. At the bottom, toggle the pull-down menu labeled “Files of type:” to All Files (*.*). Look in the C:\WINDOWS directory for a file called system.ini. If you can’t find the file, you may need to activate a feature that will let you see hidden files. To do this: Click on the Start menu, point to Settings, and select Folder Options. Click on the View tab and select Show All Files Under Hidden Files. Scroll down until you find the heading [386Enh], and add the following line or modify it, if it already exists. ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1 Restart Windows.
