Win386.swp

[Anon]

My Pentium 3 system with 256 meg ram has gotten so slow that I am just before formating the drive and restarting. I got rid of all the windows/temp files and that didn't seem to help. In looking in the root directory of the "c" dirve I find one large file win386.swp that I suppose is a swap file I may have created?? It is 786,432KB. I tried to delete it but windows won't permit it. Does anyone have a clue?

[Anon]

That is your virtual memory. Why Windows puts it there is beyond me. Do not delete it.

Brian.

[Anon]

you need to go into your system properties (right click on my computer) and then goto the proformance tab....then to virtual memory. set it to "0" and disable windows from mananging it. reboot. when you come back up the swap file may still be there....don't delete it....just follow the above steps to set the swap file to a good size. i have mine at 200 with 128 megs. you can probally get away with something similar. if you run so many apps at once that you fill that up...simply increase it...

another tip to speed it up is to disable your swap file....then defrag..then recreate it...it will make a new swap file that isn't fragmented...still another way it to put it on a deffernt drive.....

[Anon]

Thanks
Charles, were you successful, with Kurth Bemis's advice?
Shiv

[Anon]

Just click on shudown and go to DOS mode, from there damn the file "win386.swp" (delete)..the file will be recreated after u start u'r windows system again, but u can always limits the memory it should take, by going into virtual memory properties. If u dont know where that is I suggest u read some windows books to get a better idea of things inside the system which is really screwed!
have a nice day!

[Anon]

What is win386.swp:


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Question:

What is win386.swp.

Additional information:

The Win386.swp is the Windows swap file used for Virtual Memory in the Windows environment. This allows the computer to provide more memory to applications than is physically present in the form of RAM.

This file can grow very large in size and needs to space to grow. Hard disk drives with low available disk space will experience issues and decreased performance because of the lack of space available for this file to grow.

Answers:

The following is a listing of questions and answers to those questions relating to the Windows Win386.swp file.

How can I change the Win386.swp file location?

It may be necessary and/or recommended that users with different partitions or hard disk drives store the win386.swp on a different hard disk drive. Reasons why this may be beneficiary.

If little or no space is available on the drive where win386.swp is located moving the swap file will help save space on that location.
If a faster hard disk drive is installed onto the computer, moving the swap file location may help in increasing the performance of the computer.
How to move the swap file location in Windows 9x and Windows ME:

Click Start / Settings / Control Panel and double click the System icon.
In System Properties click the performance tab.
Click the Virtual Memory button.
Select the option "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings.
Specify the hard disk drive where you wish for the win386.swp file to reside.
After setting custom virtual memory size, file changes from C:\<windowsdirectory> to the root of C:\ drive.

This behavior is by design to help inform any individual examining the computer that a custom virtual memory setting has been selected.

After deleting the Win386.swp file it re-appears.

Windows Swap file is created by Windows and if it happens to be removed, Windows should recreate the file unless it has been disabled.

When storing the Win386.swp file on a removable media device and attempting to eject the storage medium from that device errors occur or the computer freezes.

Because the Windows Swap file is almost always being used ejecting the device or removing the device storing this file will cause errors as it will remove the location of where information is temporarily being stored.

When booting from a removable media the performance tab may show that the computer is running in MS-DOS compatibility mode.

Change the location of the win386.swp file to a non-removable media.

Is the Win386.swp a computer virus?

While it is not impossible for a virus to be within the Win386.swp file it is very unlikely that you have a virus on the computer.

There are several users or so-called 'hackers' who claim that they have infected your computer with the Win386.swp virus. This file is not a virus however to some users it may appear to be a virus as the file grows very large in size as well as well re-appear after deleting the file.

If an individual has claimed to have sent you a virus through a chat channel, however you have not downloaded or accepted any files it is very unlikely that you have a virus and that they are just trying to scare your or cause you to believe that they are a hacker.

[Anon]

ive 2 hard drives 1st with 4 partitions (2 primary partitions one for the extended and 3 logical...2nd with linus with one primary partition on the beginning of the drive)...ive moved the swp file to the 1st partition of the 2nd drive and when i restart the computer, there shows a swap file in every drive read by windows (varying sizes)....is this normal? also...often when i reboot, the 2nd hard drive doesnt show at all.....????

help?!

jeremy

[Anon]

I'm having trouble with this problem too.
Thanks to you guys who give me at least solution's options.
Anyway, I just want to share another optional
that I found from this site. Hope this will help us.

http://www.wavzbak.com/help/hlp44.html

Best Regards.