swapfile.sys file eating 20GB of Space .... How do I remove or reduce it?

Discussion in 'Windows 8' started by DEBKOL35, Oct 21, 2013.

  1. DEBKOL35

    DEBKOL35 MDL Senior Member

    Mar 20, 2009
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    My C drive had 25GB free space. Suddenly I see only 5GB free space. Didn't install anything at all. Then I find swapfile.sys file is eating all 20GB. Any idea how to remove or reduce it? I searched at google and people saying its because of pagefile. Page file is only 4gb !!

    Anyone got any idea?
     
  2. Enigma256

    Enigma256 MDL Senior Member

    Jan 17, 2011
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    swapfile.sys is used only for Metro apps. It should only be 256MB--that's the size on every one of my 8/8.1 deployments. My guess is that you ran a misbehaving or buggy Metro app that consumed too much memory. Don't know how to reduce the size, though. Does rebooting help?
     
  3. eydee

    eydee Guest

    If nothing else helps boot from a linux live cd, mount the partition and delete the file. Then don't use metro crap ever again. Desktop applications can do everything metro can, and more.
     
  4. Enigma256

    Enigma256 MDL Senior Member

    Jan 17, 2011
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  5. c3po

    c3po MDL Junior Member

    Feb 12, 2009
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    If you have 4Gb of Ram or more, just disable the pagefile. It will also disable swapfile.
     
  6. ian82

    ian82 MDL Expert

    Mar 7, 2012
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    I have 32 GB of RAM in my laptop and alwqys have 95% of it free, but when running some MP3s on Windows Media Player, I got an error message of low memory that is because I had no swap file so now I just set it to 1024 MB = Minimum / 1024 MB = Maximum for those app that look for a page file :mad:
     
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  7. Mr Jinje

    Mr Jinje MDL Expert

    Aug 19, 2009
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    #7 Mr Jinje, Oct 21, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 20, 2017
  8. woebetide

    woebetide MDL Member

    May 28, 2007
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    Idem for me!
    Have 24 GB ram, swap set to 1024MB;)
     
  9. ian82

    ian82 MDL Expert

    Mar 7, 2012
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    yup, that ensures our swap file is small as possible and not waste our precious RAM, but also we wont run into a problem if some stupid problem specifically looks for the swap file to operate

    I can't believe that at this day and age where the average person has 8 GB RAM, WMP still looks for a swap file! I think the programmers of WMP are living in the stone age still
     
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