Corrupt Swap File Dual Booting Windows 3.1

• Microsoft Windows 95

SYMPTOMS

When you start Windows or Windows for Workgroups versions 3.1 or 3.11 on a computer that has Windows 95 and dual boot installed, you may receive a warning about a corrupt swap file. This occurs only after you run Windows 95 and then boot the previous version of Windows.

CAUSE

When Windows 95 is installed to a clean directory on a computer that also has Windows 3.1x or Windows for Workgroups installed, Windows 95 attempts to share a swap file with the existing Windows installation. It does so to save disk space. In most cases, this causes no conflict. However, if you change the virtual memory setting from within the previous version of Windows, or if you re-install Windows 95 over the existing Windows 95 directory, when you run Windows 95 again, it may change the swap file in such a way that Windows 3.1x displays the "Corrupt swap file" message.

RESOLUTION

To work around this behavior, delete the PagingFile and MinPagingFileSize lines from the System.ini file so that Windows 95 has its own swap file.

To save disk space, you may can change the Windows 3.1x virtual memory settings to use a temporary swap file. If you want Windows 3.1x to use a permanent swap file, run its Virtual Memory applet to reconstruct the swap file.