Prefetch

[David]

My firewall has just recently started requesting
premission for strange fies to acces the internet. The
fle names are similar to the following but not always the
same olpbckqh.exe. I have searched for the files and
find them in a directory called C:\windows\prefetch. Is
it safe to delete all the files in this directory or do
they have an important purpose? I can see other
applications in there which are possibly genuine as they
seem to refer to applications on this machine.
Thanks

 

[Roger Abell [MVP]]

The prefetch directory is loaded by the system with
files used often or early during bootup, so that these
can be stage loaded in order to speed up your usage
experience.
Usually if a file is in prefetch it is in its normal version
stored elsewhere, and it will (with sufficient use) thus
show back up in prefetch if it is deleted.