Why the Swap File is Written to at Startup in Windows 3.1

 Last reviewed: November 23, 1994
Article ID: Q82730
The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Windows operating system versions 3.1, 3.11

SUMMARY

After starting the Microsoft Windows operating system version 3.1 on a machine with less than 4 megabytes (MB) of available RAM or loading several Windows applications in the Startup group, Windows accesses the hard drive for a few seconds.

Windows is doing two things to make your applications run faster:

  • All segments from the boot-time modules (Kernel, User, GDI, the display driver, and so on) are loaded into memory if there is enough free physical memory to hold the segments. This speeds up the loading of applications that require these segments.
  • All unlocked virtual memory is written to the paging swap file. This allows Windows to quickly discard memory because the contents have already been written to the paging swap file.

Note: This disk activity does not prevent you from doing other tasks. All of these operations are done during "idle" system time. Applications respond normally while this disk activity is in progress.

This behavior does not change if you enable or disable 32-bit disk access.

KBCategory: kbenv kbdisplay
KBSubcategory: win31 winboot winmem
Additional reference words: 3.10 swapfile temporary permanent

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Last reviewed: November 23, 1994
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