Hi,

I've read that one can set things up so that Win98 and Win2K share pagefile.sys. The idea is to save disk space in a dual boot configuration. For example,

C: (800 MB, FAT16)
Contains FreeDOS, some DOS utilities and
pagefile.sys set to 512 - 768 MB.

D: (2 GB, FAT32)
Contains Win98 and some applications

E: (4 GB, NTFS or FAT32)
Contains Win2K and most applications

F: (~30 GB, FAT32)
Data
----------

Would that be okay? I don't want to do this if it could cause a problem. And it probably wouldn't save me much disk space because I have 256 MB of RAM, and it seems that Win98 doesn't really need much of a swap file with that much memory.

Also, is a good idea to have pagefile.sys on the boot drive like I've shown above? Or would it be better to have it on E: along with Win2K?

Phil

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life." - Socrates

It should work without any trouble. I've done the same but with 2000/XP where I had both pagefiles on the same drive. Since you can only boot into one OS at a time, there shouldn't be any conflict although you may have to set your OS's to delete the respective file on exit so as to leave room for the other one.

The only way to gain any performance by moving the swapfile is to have it on another drive on another controller. If this is the same hard drive, or, another HDD on the same controller, you will gain no performance. Other than that, it doesn't really matter too much where the pagefile is located providing there's enough room for it on the drive you wish to put it on.

I can say from experience that yes, this will work. I have several test machines at work that multi-boot 98/ME/2k/XP (in about 20 different languages, no less) all sharing the same swap file.

The swap file is basically just scratch space. It doesn't matter what's there before the operating system begins using it - the OS just writes and reads to the swap file as needed during a given session. You can even delete the swap file between sessions (this would require a reboot, of course) with no ill effects.