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Back in the "old days", it wasn't too hard for computers to run out of memory and crash. So to help solve this problem the virtual memory system was created. This allows programs to use far more memory than the computer actually has installed.
This is done through the use of the swap file, also known as the page file. The swap file allows Windows to grab a chunk of hard drive space and use it as additional memory. This hard drive space is "stored" in a file called Win386.swp, which is usually in the Windows directory. Generally speaking, Windows will take things out of memory that aren't being actively used and toss them into this file, which is called "paging".
Since the hard drive is far slower than physical memory, you would like to see this happening as little as possible. When Windows is constantly having to read from or write to the swap file, which is known as "thrashing", system performance will degrade enormously.
One thing to check is to see how big your swap file normally is. If your swap file starts getting close to 200 megabytes or so in size, then it may be that Windows is relying to heavily on virtual memory. One thing that can help eliminate this is to check the "Conservative swap file usage" setting on the Tweaks tab. This will force Windows to use the swap file only when it absolutely has to, such as when your physical memory is all used up.
Also, having the disk cache properly configured can go a long way in reducing swap file use.