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ESTABLISHING A SEPARATE SWAP FILE. 

Update:  With ram being so cheap now days, it does not make sense to even fool with a swap file.  Simply increase the amount of ram so the swap file is not even used--that’s how to speed up your machine.  If that isn’t possible, read on:

Do not establish a separate swap file unless you have two hard drives, the second hard drive is not as busy as the first and (preferably) the second drive is as fast as the first.  Unless these conditions exist, you may actually decrease your performance by not letting Windows manage the swap file.  With a second drive, the heads can sit right over a swap file partition you create and they will move very little.  If you set a separate swap file partition on the same hard drive, the drive heads will bounce back and forth between the system files and the swap file.  A benefit of having a separate swap file is that when it is in C: partition, it causes fragmentation and I try to avoid that.

The first step is to determine how big to make the partition.   You can use a Windows tool named System Monitor (sysmon.exe) to see how big your swap file becomes during heavy usage.  To the largest sized swap file observed, add a comfortable amount of space as a buffer so you do not get out of memory error messages caused by the swap file being too small.  I typically established a 500 mb partition and set a minimum size of 100 mb.  Some users may have to establish a much larger partition.

Open the Control Panel, System, Performance tab and click the Virtual Memory button.  Mark the Let Me Specify... radio button and select the partition that you made for the swap file.  Set a minimum and maximum size to use all the space in the partition.  Click on OK and disregard the scary notice that you will receive.