It bad dont do it slow PC Info > http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000743.html = One more time: do not clean out your Prefetch folder!
http://www.populartechnology.net/2005/10/c...ation-load.html
http://blogs.msdn.com/ryanmy/archive/2005/05/25/421882.aspx = Misinformation and the The Prefetch Flag
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000024.html = Beware of Bogus XP Advice
http://djlizard.net/2006/06/02/157/ = Old myths never die
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/0...el/default.aspx = Prefetch
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/new...ked-as-xp-tweak
Subject: Microsoft claims Longhorn will be, er, faster
The only reason why its faster is they added a superfetch feature to the prefetcher. If you look at the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory ManagementPrefetcher
you will notice in windows xp
EnablePrefetcher = 3 and you will notice in windows longhorn
EnableSuperfetch = 1
Well, guess what? You can put the EnableSuperfetch = 1 in windows xp and get the same speed.
Wow, Microsoft just added a feature that was already there in xp.
==========================================
It's 2006, and somehow, people still apparently believe that Windows XP does not allow you to use all of your bandwidth
because of a service called QoS (Quality of Service). This is patently false.
People also think that cleaning the Prefetch folder helps, or that not cleaning it will somehow lower your performance. I
would have thought a site like "windowsnetworking.com" would have been a bit more professional about these things, but I
can't have everything. They said, and I quote (emphasis theirs):This is bull. Let's break it down:
* XP will retain an index of the locations of files needed by a process in the prefetch folder even if you only use it one
time, which is not a big deal. Windows XP automatically prunes old entries after a 129th entry (or more) needs to be created.
At worst, you're going to lose less than 20 MB of hard disk space (my prefetch is currently using 4MB).
* XP systems will very low hardware resources (such as memory and hard disk space) are already at a disadvantage, but without
prefetching, it would be even worse. There is no advantage in deleting prefetch entries.... and the only time prefetch
entries need to change are when the files they are prefetching have changed (such as being upgraded by a Windows Service Pack
or hotfix). And as previously stated, they will automatically be pruned to just 128 entries. At least someone out there knows
what they're talking about. If you delete all of the prefetch files, they have to be prefetched *again* (which comes at a
performance loss), and doesn't that seem like a waste of time?
* Windows doesn't load things in the Prefetch folder unless you're actually attempting to run the program, so claiming that
Windows erroneously loads files in there that no longer exist (and thus need to be cleaned) is also patently false.
* Ed Bott said: It doesn?t actually preload anything into RAM until you run the program, and when you do that, prefetching
only works if you have RAM to spare.
Notes from Microsoft:
* Once every three days, by default, Windows XP will perform a partial defragmentation and adjust the layout of the disk
based upon current use. The files to be moved are written in the file Layout.ini (found in the Prefetch directory under the
System Root directory). [1]
(Dial-a-fix's "Process Idle Tasks" tool forces this to happen sooner than 3 days).
* Windows XP also uses prefetching when launching applications. The files and the contents of the files accessed by each new
process are observed and recorded. No prefetching can be done for the first launch of an application, so first launches are
often considerably slower than subsequent launches. About 85% to 90% of the improvement is realized after just one launch of
an application, with the remaining speed improvement coming after the system has had an opportunity to adjust the disk layout
Anyway, these technical myths are extremely annoying to technicians (such as myself), who constantly have to disprove these
dubious claims to customers.
==================
I timed from power up, starting with the first beep (POST code) to the point where the hourglass cursor disappeared.
With a full Prefetch directory:
? 0:50 to login screen
? 1:08 to desktop
After emptying Prefetch directory:
? 0:58 to login screen
? 1:57 to desktop
In other words, it took me nearly a minute longer to boot after using this ?speedup? tip!
========================================================
CCleaner Cripples Application Load Times
Author: Andrew
Recently CCleaner has added an internet urban legend as a cleaning option, "Old Prefetch data". Cleaning the Prefetch folder
is an internet Myth that simply will not die due to the gross ignorance of many people in regards to how Windows XP
Prefetching works. These same people generally recommend other bogus advice such as disabling Windows Prefetching completely
and adding /Prefetch:1 to desktop shortcuts.
"Bottom line: You will NOT improve Windows performance by cleaning out the Prefetch folder. You will, in fact, degrade
Windows performance by cleaning out the Prefetch folder." - Source
CCleaner for the most part is a good application, it quickly and easily removes temporary and unused files from Windows. It
has a nice interface that clearly shows what has been "cleaned". On neglected systems this can free hundreds of Megabytes of
harddisk space. Apparently in the authors quest to clean everything and anything, he blindly ignored how Prefetching works.
Prefetching
"When a Windows XP-based system is booted, data is saved about all logical disk read operations. On later boots, this
information is used to pre-fetch these files in parallel with other boot operations. During boot and application launch, a
Windows system demands and pages a sizable amount of data in small chunks (4K to 64K), seeking between files, directories,
and metadata. The Logical Prefetcher, which is new for Windows XP, brings much of this data into the system cache with
efficient asynchronous disk I/Os that minimize seeks. During boot, the logical prefetcher finishes most of the disk I/Os that
need to be done for starting the system in parallel to device initialization delays, providing faster boot and logon
performance.
Logical prefetching is accomplished by tracing frequently accessed pages in supported scenarios and efficiently bringing them
into memory when the scenario is launched again. When a supported scenario is started, the transition page faults from mapped
files are traced, recording which page of a file is accessed. When the scenario has completed (either the machine has booted
or the application started), the trace is picked up by a user-mode maintenance service, the Task Scheduler. The information
in the trace is used to update or create a prefetch-instructions file that specifies which pages from which files should be
prefetched at the next launch.
The user-mode service determines which pages to prefetch by looking at how successful prefetching has been for that scenario
in the past, and which pages were accessed in the last several launches of the scenario. When the scenario is run again, the
kernel opens the prefetch instructions file and asynchronously queues paging I/O for all of the frequently accessed pages.
The actual disk I/Os are sorted by the disk drivers to go up the disk once to load all pages that are not already in memory.
This minimizes seeks, cuts down on disk time, and increases performance. The kernel also prefetches the file system metadata
for the scenario, for example, MFT entries and directory files. Because prefetching is useful only when the required data is
not in memory, the applications that are launched frequently are not traced and prefetched each time." - Source
Prefetching Facts
1. Prefetching is enabled by default in Windows XP.
2. Prefetching is configured optimally by default.
3. Prefetching will significantly improve application load times.
4. The Prefetch (.pf) files are not a cache, they are reference files.
5. The Prefetch (.pf) files do not preload/cache anything upon Windows startup that does not normally load at startup.
6. Only one Prefetch (.pf) file is referenced during startup = NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.PF
7. Only one Prefetch (.pf) file is created per application.
8. The Prefetch (.pf) files including the Layout.ini and NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.PF files are automatically updated.
9. The Prefetch folder is auto cleaned after 128 entries have been reached down to the 32 most used applications.
10. Notebooks running on battery power will not execute idle tasks and thus cannot further optimize or remove prefetch files.
What CCleaner does
CCleaner deletes any Prefetch file older then two weeks based on the .pf file's last access date. This is completely idiotic
for a number of reasons. First you should never delete a .pf for any installed application. With the .pf file missing, that
application will take up to 100% more time to load when you decide to launch it. CCleaner does this to any application you
have installed on your computer but have not used in over two weeks. It makes absolutely no sense to delete these files. Why
would you deliberately want to slow down any installed application's load time? It will also do this if you have not used you
computer for two weeks. Second, it is quite common to disable the NTFS Last Access Time Stamp for performance reasons. I
actually recommend doing this since it speeds up the file system. In this case CCleaner will delete any .pf file that was
created over two weeks ago. You can clearly see how running CCleaner in this case would wind up deleting ALL your Prefetch
files every two weeks. Now you are crippling every application's load time on your system instead of just the ones you have
not used in two weeks. Ridiculous!
Testing
Make sure the Task Scheduler service is set to automatic. Launch an application like Firefox three times. Reboot and make
sure there is a FIREFOX.EXE-XXXXXXXX.pf file in the C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch folder. If there is, launch Firefox and time it. Then
delete the .pf file, reboot, relaunch Firefox and time it again. You will now see Firefox take a significantly longer time to
load. Now imagine this on any other application, then imagine doing this deliberately every two weeks? Why? To save a tiny
bit of HD space? It makes no sense. 128 .pf files take up maybe 5 MB of disk space.
Conclusion
Do not clean the prefetch folder! If you use CCleaner uncheck the "Old Prefetch data" option. Finally let the makers of
CCleaner know they need to remove this option from CCleaner.
so read & dont do it OK