Is there any way to clear the win386 swap file?

Is there any way to clear the win386 swap file? this file seems to grow larger and larger untill my computer starts giving me stack overflow problems or just freezes up. I have a cd burner that says it cleans up the cache when I write on it or store info. Also i have a program that came with the computer that is Mediamatics dvd express I have noticed that this program also is memory intensive and I must clean up using maintenance wizard often to be able to run programs without error messages. my win386swap file is 128 mb. my browser is netscape 7.0 any suggestions?

This question was answered on February 22, 2003. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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The Swap file is the space on the disk used for virtual memory That is, the computer pretends to have more memory than it affectively has, thus allowing applications to allocate as much memory as needed without beind dependant of the actual free physical RAM memory Memory that has not been used (accessed) for some time is then swapped out to this file if needed to make room in the pysical RAM for currently accessed memory.

You can disable or limit the size of the WIN386.SWP, but I would discourage you to do so because it can lead to poor performance or error messages when you run multiple applications You can find these options in the Control Panel, System, (select the last Tab), Virtual Memory.

What I would encourage to do is to limit the physical RAM used to buffer file data (file cache) To change this, open then SYSTEM.INI file from the Windows dir, locate the [VCache] section and add these lines:

MinFileCache=16384

MaxFileCache=65536

Hope this answers your question

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Posted by Enyenihi of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on February 22, 2003

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