Deleting contents of Win386.swp 1

[joker19745]

I've edited my autoexec.bat file to delete the contents of the index.dat files. It works fine, my question is: Is deleting the contents of the win386.swp file beneficial? I realize this is my swap file for virtual memory, but I was under the impression that it didn't store data in it, that it was empty upon each reboot.

 

[rgstewart]

It doesn't store data - it's just extra space for the CPU to use during calculations. Deleting it is effectively turning off your Virtual Memory ... not advisable. Anyhoo, unless it's eating up your space, it's not doing any harm.

Looks like you're doing some optimising around your system - you might want to check this out. I only found it recently, but it's been damn useful:

http://www.burzurq.com/forum/trevtweak.html

There's a bit in there about a file called delIndex.bat - look that out and use it ... it'll knock Mbs of wasted space off your system!

 

[joker19745]

Thanks for the link, there's a lot of useful information in it. The batch file I'm using works great for deleting the index.dat contents but not the index.dat themselves (which is my goal). I have seen other batch files posted on the net that include the command line:
erase C:\Windows\Win386.swp
with the reasoning being "You may wish to delete your win386.swp file everynow and then",but I don't see a reason to do it. I've heard people claim a virus can remain in the swap file but I've never witnessed this personally. Thanks again

It's nice to be important, but more important to be nice.

 

[wolluf]

You can delete the swapfile by booting to a dos prompt and deleting it there (or using the command line you posted above in autoexec.bat - you may need to run attrib -h -s -h first) . Or you could set windows to not use a swapfile, reboot, then set it to use one again. It will have stored in it whatever windows was using it for before you logged off - so some people consider it a possible security risk if others have access to your machine (personally I'd just set it to a fixed size and forget about it!)