1.   But if the swap file is tiny, your PC is forced to limit the amount of information it squirrels away and things get snail-slow.

2.   Closer inspection reveals that the tests used machines that had been crippled with a Windows swap file of only four megabytes, roughly one-fourth the standard minimum.

3.   However, I find that Windows still wants to set up a swap file on my hard drive.

4.   However, other programs often expect a swap file to be present, and will call upon Windows to add more virtual memory.

5.   The only memory evidently added was in a larger swap file.

6.   The swap file is a portion of the hard drive where Windows temporarily stores information when much faster random access memory is full.

7.   There are ways to combat this sort of attack, such as overwriting swap files as the PGP program does.

8.   Why does it need a swap file when I have so much memory?

9.   Windows uses some of your free hard-disk space to temporarily store information in a place called a swap file.