SWAP FILES and \TEMP - Win98 & Win2000

[filmcan]

How do I set up my SWAP FILES and \TEMP in Win98 and Win2000?
My Win98SE is on D:\ and Win2K is on G:\
I want SWAP FILES and \TEMP to be on C:\
How do I set it up????

 

[MrMoney]

all thats done in ur system settings

right click my comp > properties > advanced > performance options

virtual mem > change

in there u can set all ur swap file sizes and their locations

for ur temp dir, still under advanced > enviromental variables (just under performance options)

change 2 wherever

good luck

 

[Kinesis]

A spin off of this question. Does W2k automatically clear the TEMP directory on Reboot or Restart? Cause I know Win98 doesn't, but I have dos pif that I click on periodically to clear the directory. (Batch file basically). I have had no luck creating the same in W2k. Any suggestions.

 

[filmcan]

I guess I gotta ask... Is the swap file the same as virtual memory? I have 512MB RAM. How big should my swap file or Virtual Memory be?

 

[Staver]

512M of memory and Win2000 will recommend 1.5X to 3X. If you have the space set it to a 1G permanent swapfile on C:\ with FAT16 for speed.

 

[Psychoholic]

<< 512M of memory and Win2000 will recommend 1.5X to 3X. If you have the space set it to a 1G permanent swapfile on C:\ with FAT16 for speed. >>


That's ludicrous, and a waste of hard drive space. First of all very few people would have the need for a 1 Gig swap file. Those that have a need for a file that big would have more than 512MB of memory. Then 1.5x, 2x, etc. rules are grossly outdated and were brought about during the days of Windows 3.1. The sad part is these &quot;rules&quot; still float around on the net on various tweaking sites and are still regarded as relevant when they are not.

A good starting point with W2K is the amount of RAM + 12MB. The 12 MB gives you room for a memory dump if needed. If you need more you'll know.

 

[Shudder]

1 gig swapfile? I think having to write that file that large alone would negate any increase in performance.

I don't, and I'm not alone at all, agree with the 1.5x - 2x thing. So if you have 1 gig of RAM you want me to have 2 gigs of HDD space for a swapfile? THat's rediculous.

I'ts not like windows takes everything in RAM and swaps it back and forth to the hard drive, so there's no reason if you have a decent amount of memory to have that large a swap file.

I have 384 and I have 200MB on my main drive, 100 on another physical drive and I have better performance than I ever have had. If you use win2000 check your task manager.. some files take up 30 megs of ram but have maybe 8M in swap usage. I think a 300-500 MB for any situation would be great, and if you have more than one physical drive, spreading them apart is a great way to improve performance (since you can read off one drive and write swap to the other at the same time)

 

[Psychoholic]

Shudder has a good point about spreading the swap file across multiple drives. It is also the best way to increase performance. Using FAT16 for the swap file in W2K is a joke. The latest version of NTFS is only slightly slower than FAT16 in benchmarks and performs even with FAT32. You would never notice the difference.

One caution about spreading the page/swap file across multiple disks. You will not get a dump of the file in the event of a crash.

 

[Shudder]

As long as I stay away from SBLive and adaptec, I haven't had a single crash in win2k

But wha'ts the use of retrieving anything in the dump file? I never use it or really care much about things if the system does reboot

 

[Psychoholic]

<< But wha'ts the use of retrieving anything in the dump file? I never use it or really care much about things if the system does reboot >>


Not everyone needs or evens uses it but there are cases were it can be handy, especially with reproducable crashes.

 

[GundamF91]

That 1.5x-3x RAM for SWAP is way outdated. It was made for the days of 32mb RAM in Win95. 96MB SWAP with 32MB sounds more reasonable then 512MB RAM, 1.5GB HD Swap.

 

[igiveup]

Having a swap file of such a large size is not only a waste, its worse than that. When your computer can't find what it is looking for in main memory it boucnces to the swap file. If it can't find it there it then goes out to the rest of the hard drive to find what it needs. The problem is that with such a large swap file your computer has to look long and hard for something that might be there, might not be. By the time your computer finds out that it ISN'T there you lose whatever performance you might have gained by having a swap file. Keep your swap file lean and mean an you might have a shot at decent performance.

I believe part of the original question was &quot;does windows 2000 empty the swap file on shutdown?&quot; The answer is no, not by default. You can change this though. Under Administrative Tools in the start menu (Start>Programs>Administrative Tools) you can find a item named &quot;Local Security Policy&quot;. In there somewhere is the setting you are looking for. I am not in front of my Win2k box at the moment.

 

[Staver]

If you frequent the developer areas on MS they often talk about limitations in the OS in great detail. Here is one. I personally think there is no shortage of HD space if one has to have it since it's at a very reasonable cost. For the record, I have had a 1 Gig swap since I set W2K when it first came out and that was with 512M, and its been smooth sailing from day one. 1 Gig of memory now with a 2G swap over 2 partitions, and even with this much memory W2K puts part each process you run in virtual memory. Add VM Size column in taskmgr and you'll see what your system is really using.