Hello, The swap file windows produces;everything that is loaded like drivers and programs are initially loaded in the RAM right? When it runs out of RAM it stores data in the swap file,and pages the needed blockes back in to memory right? When i monitor the size of my swapfile regularly(windows manages the virtual memory) it is very often around 60 MB,can it be said that this would be an indication for a RAM update from at least this size? Can somebody clear this up for me? A leason in computertech is always welcome hehe! Thanks! Roy

That 60Mb will be the "high water mark" of swap that you have used. Your typical usage will be less than that. Try running System Monitor (it's an installable Windows Option) to monitor "swap file in use". In any case, if you have the HD space to do it, it's best to have a fixed swap file (min=max) BUT it MUST be big enough. Where there's a fairly high level of swap activity, as in your case, 2-2.5x RAM size is a good rule of thumb. In any case, it would have to be bigger than the 60Mb to have seen. If you decide to do this, defrag your HD first. With 60Mb peak use, you might well consider a RAM upgrade - I upgraded from 32MB to 64 Mb, and saw a noticeable improvement in performance, especially while on the 'net.

Adding more physical memory will speed things up, but it won't make much difference to the size of the swapfile. Under 98SE the size of the swapfile on a machine with 128 MBs is frightening, and the OS only uses about 40% of the available RAM before using the swapfile! If you stop doing anything for a couple of minutes Win 98 starts copying everything in to the swap file. Provided that you always make sure that you have a couple of hundred MBs free on the drive you shouldn't have any problems with it. Dave