Let your swap file roam




I have a 1.2Gb hard disk that is partitioned into C: and D: drives. Drive D:, where Windows 95 is installed, is about 120Mb. I'm running out of room on this partition, and every time I install a program -- even if it's on drive C: -- it eats up space on D:.
I read a tip in PC World stating that twice as much free space should be available on the hard drive for the Windows swap file as you have installed memory. I have 16Mb of RAM but only 9Mb of free space on Drive D:.
Can I copy my Windows installation to Drive C:, or should I just uninstall Windows 95 and then reinstall it on C:? If I choose the latter option, I'll have to reinstall all of my programs, too.
- Marlan Hanson


Simply moving Windows 95 to another drive (using Explorer or the xcopy command) won't work, since all of the registry and .ini file references to Drive D: would fail. The easiest thing to do is move the swap file to another drive that has more free space; I'm assuming C: has more room.
To do that, choose Start--Settings--Control Panel, double-click the System icon, click the Performance tab and then Virtual Memory, select Let me specify my own virtual memory settings, and choose another drive from the Hard disk list. Click OK, Yes, and Close. When you restart your PC, your hard disk should be breathing easier.
- Scott Spanbauer


Category: Win95
Issue: Sep 1997
Pages: 164

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