Prefetch folder

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Belloni

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I read ages ago that going into /run and typing prefetch brings up a folder, and by deleting everything in this folder, it will quicken the load up time for your PC, i did that often and it really worked, now for some time, i have tried this, loaded up the prefetch folder, to see nothing in there?! Now after a few months, still nothing in there ... have i done something to the pc or ... ?

Would like to know, because atm, pc takes a fair time to load up everything >:( haha
 
I do not recommend anybody mess with the Prefetch Folder ... Windows XP only rebuilds it anyway.

I have seen & read a lot of FUD on how "doing this-n-that" will improve a system with limited resorces ... huh! What limited resorces? If you were fool enough to sTick XP on a Celeron with 256 RAM then that's your bloody fault ... give it some more ram and or get a 'faster' CPU.


OK Belloni, open regedit and find ...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

In the right pane, look for the key named EnablePrefetcher. The value of this key represents how prefetch works on your system. Values you can choose from include:
  • 0—Disable
  • 1—Application Launch Prefetch
  • 2—Boot Prefetch
  • 3—Prefetch everything
To change the value, double-click it. You'll then see the Edit DWORD Value screen. Enter the value representing the level of prefetching you want in the Value Data field.

THE DEFAULT setting is 3

;)

AS ALWAYS ... BACK-UP YOUR REGISTRY BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY FIXES
 
From MS direct ...

[font="]XP systems have a Prefetch directory underneath the windows root directory, full of .pf files — these are lists of pages to load. The file names are generated from hashing the EXE to load — whenever you load the EXE, we hash, see if there’s a matching [/font][font="](exename)[/font][font="]-([/font][font="]hash).pf[/font][font="] file in the prefetch directory, and if so we load those pages. (If it doesn’t exist, we track what pages it loads, create that file, and pick a handful of them to save to it.) So, first off, [/font][font="]it is a bad idea to periodically clean out that folder as some tech sites suggest[/font][font="].[/font][font="] For one thing, XP will just re-create that data anyways; secondly, it trims the files anyways if there’s ever more than 128 of them so that it doesn’t needlessly consume space. So not only is deleting the directory totally unnecessary, but you’re also putting a temporary dent in your PC’s performance.
Click to expand...
Do not listen to these "so called tech" sites they are talking a load of 'effing drivel ... they are no techs their if the even hint at any such recomendations ... stupid buggers.

[/font]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.

Oh, and for anyone who cites ANY TECH site as a source, let me just say that it will contains more serious factual errors than I can count.
 
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