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Old Prefetch Data


SmooveS10

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Greetings,

 

I have CCleaner checked to delete Old Prefetch Data. Although it analyzes about 30 files to delete, it never deletes them. I can run the analyze & then clean scan several times, but they fail to delete every time. Otherwise, in the over year I've been using CCleaner, I have nothing but praise & recommendation for it!

 

Bernard

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First of all; if you delete the Prefetch files very often, they lost their purpose. Their purpose is to open applications faster, but the actual benefit is very minimal (IMO). You should delete them sometimes, because as the time goes by, the Prefetch directory can become very full and there for actually slow things down.

 

I personally have disabled Prefetching completely. Here's how to do it: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms940847.aspx

 

And about your question: I think that those Prefetch files are used at the time, so they cannot be deleted...

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... You should delete them sometimes, because as the time goes by, the Prefetch directory can become very full and there for actually slow things down. ...
If Windows is working properly, Prefetch is self-limiting. After it reaches 128 .pf files, it deletes all but the most recent 64.

 

... And about your question: I think that those Prefetch files are used at the time, so they cannot be deleted...
I've never seen Prefetch files locked in use.

 

I have seen some computers where Windows wasn't working properly and excessive .pf files had accumulated.

 

CeeCee: Is that what you meant?

 

Bernard: If you really want to clean Prefetch, try manually deleting all of the contents one time. I normally don't clean Prefetch but where Windows wasn't working properly (as mentioned above), cleaning manually once seemed to fix whatever was wrong.

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Thanks for the replies. I understand what the Prefetch Data files are for. I have read where manually deleting them once a month or so can speed up boot time(after the initial restart), and have done so in the past. I've only tried to do it with CCleaner "repeatedly", because it has never deleted them. It's not something I would do daily if the files were actually being deleted. "Just trying to see if I could find a solution to that glitch. Guess not! :-) There are 95 files in there right now. Time to delete?

 

Bernard

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Thanks for the replies. I understand what the Prefetch Data files are for. I have read where manually deleting them once a month or so can speed up boot time(after the initial restart), and have done so in the past.

But (unless you've specifically disabled it) Windows already does that, and more often than once a month, so pretty pointless anyway.

 

Back on topic though, I don't know if CCleaner is having a problem clearing old prefetch. Just tried it and it didn't pick up any old pf files to clean when I analysed so can't check it myself :mellow:

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