My computer's getting strangled!

[steve181]

Hi

I have 2 drives C (5 gig) and D (32gig). C drive holds all the sensitive windows stuff.

I have massive amounts of room on d drive but c drive is full, i think this is the reason for my computer locking up, and just generally being slower.

I was reading about a file in C drive called "win386.swp". The importance of this file among other things is takes up 20% of c drive. I read that "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."

That would explain how the drive's been expanding by itself, and in turn causing me problems!

Anyway aparently i can move the win386.swp to D drive where there's more room and it probably would solve my computer problems. However i'm always in D drive, and basically it's to vunerable in D. Also the process of expanding C drive to give it more breathing space looks hellishly complicated.

Any suggestions to releive the firm grip on C drive's neck? cheers

[aloges]

A start would be deleting (manually) things on C: that you don't need, like temporary files and temporary internet files. A load of those doesn't get deleted by the automatic Win XP (if that's what you're using) drive "cleaner". Running scandisk may also help.

[steve181]

thanks for the suggestion, but I have win 98, and delete temp internet files all the time, scandisk doesn't do much either!

[slate]

It is very true that when a hard disk gets completely full performance suffers horrendously, though that may not be the only problem you have. But definitely move the swapfile to D: it will be in absolutely no danger there. It grows and shrinks by itself, managed by Windows, it will not overwrite any of your files and you cannot delete it by accident. It is a good first step to restore your pc's performance.

[aquiros]

Try also uninstalling applications like MS Office, Photoshop, etc from Drive C and then reinstalling them to Drive D; I think you can even use a software to move the applications from one drive to another without uninstalling (i forgot the name!). Move media files to drive D (do a serach for .mp3, .wav, .bmp, etc and send them to D:.

good luck

[steve181]

thanks for your ideas, i'll use your advice thanks Slate. Just 1 thing though, Can i make a file for it to go into before i move it to drive D? As you can see from the screenshot it would look somewhat out of place without its own folder

<IMG SRC=http://www.jetphotos.net/user-uploads/cock.jpg

[steve181]

[aquiros]

For the Swap file you cannot create a folder. You actually won't see it using the Windows Explorer so don't worry. Just go to:
- My Computer, [right click] ---> Properties [left click]
- Look for the Performance tab (last one), click it then go to Virtual Memory
- Once in Virtual Memory, click on "Let me specify..." and then select your drive D:
-Click OK, until it tells you to restart the computer. Do it and the swap file will now be created in drive D.

good luck!