You don't want to use the swap file if you don't have to.
The swap file is used when you are out of RAM and need to write to the slower Harddisk.
If your not using it its because you have a healthy ammount of ram and shouldn't need it unless you open some very memory intensive programs.
Right click the "my computer" icon on your desktop and choose properties.
Look around and you will find a "role for this computer" it should have the options of home user, laptop and network server. Set this to Network server, it has nothing to do with the actuall role of the computer, just the memory useage, if you have more than 32mb you want to be a network server.
Also there is a place to set your swapfile settings here also. Choose to set your own settings, ignore windows warnings that you shouldnt do this. What you want to do is set the minimum and maximum the same number, this keeps the swap file one solid size, and it doesn't have to write to the FAT everytime it is used and resized.
If you have a small Hard disk 2-4gigs, set your swap file to 384mb, if you have a larger disk, or plenty of space, use 512mb or even 768 (if you have a large 20+gig disk and wont miss the space)
You can right click the recycle bin and set it to 1% instead fo 10% of the HD to get some space back.
Aother option you have is to overclock your CPU. raising the motherboard BUS will speed up the system more than increasing the multiplier, if this last line doesn't make any sense, find someone to help you do this that understands overclocking, or go read up on it at the many hardware web sites out there.
Another thing to do is to run "msconfig" in the run command line, or if this doesn't work, right click the start button and choose explore. You want to stop any program from automatically running in the background all the time.
ON a win98 machine you should only have a few processes running if you hit ctrl-alt-delete. If you have things running like winamp agent, or REal audio, turn them off or stop them from starting. Most programs can be told not to load, but others have to be forced. You can check the boxes to turn things off in startup using msconfig, or find the "startup" folder under the start menu folder (there are sometime more than one startup folders, do a find to find them all)Here you will see shortcuts or programs that are supposed to start when the PC starts, anything you don't normally use, shut off!
Other than that, the Harddisk is probably the slowest thing in your PC right now. You can always upgrade to a 7200rpm harddisk, get at least 80-100GB or larger, and try to buy one with the 8mb cache (normally ahve 2mb or less)This will be much faster than your current systems HD, and best of all you should be able to migrate it to your new machine when you upgrade.
