Saturday, October 6, 2007

Clean out the PREFETCH folder

Windows XP uses a system called 'prefetch' to organize and preload some of the data necessary for commonly used applications and files. A folder called prefetch is used to store the information the operating system needs to carry out this operation.
After several months of use, the prefetch folder may become quite overloaded with older references to software and files that may no longer be in use.It's a good idea to manually empty the older files out of the prefetch folder every few months or so.
To do this: Navigate to 'c:\windows\prefetch' and delete all .
PF files that are older than a week or two.

3 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Cleaning the prefetch folder is a myth and will impair performance. Contrary to popular opinion, prefetch does not preload anything at boot time. These files are not referenced until the application is launched. Old and obsolete entries will have virtually no impact on performance, even if in large numbers. Deleting entries for active applications will temporarily cripple their launch time. In any event the folder is self cleaning after 128 entries. I have seen this occur many times.

This worthless tip has been spread by a great many uninformed tech sites and forums.

References:
http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html

Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA
CompTIA Network+, A+

Anonymous said...

Bull... shit...

Isn't the prefetch meme dead yet? God, it's 2007 and people still don't know how Windows prefetch works...

Anonymous said...

BAD IDEA

Prefetch is a method of optimizing both boot and application launch times. Application prefetch files are referenced only when the application is started, not at boot time. Unused or rarely used entries will have virtually no impact on performance. In any event the folder is self cleaning after 128 entries. Manual cleaning will impair application launch times and has no benefits.

The prefetch system requires that the task Scheduler service be enabled and set to Automatic. Some uninformed sources have suggested that it may be safely disabled. Doing so will severely impact performance over time.

References:
http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html

Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA

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