Is This True About SuperFetch?

Undesirable

Undesirable

Undesirable

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Is it true that when you disable SuperFetch, it disables prefetching altogether? I've noticed that when I turn it off, startup applications take a lot longer to open when I boot my computer, and the order in which they load also appears to be different.

I've tried both stopping the SuperFetch service and changing the "HKLM / System / CurrentControlSet / Control / Session Manager / Memory Management / Prefetch Parameters / EnableSuperfetch" registry key value to 0,1,2 and 3. A value of 0 stops it churning my hard drive loading stuff into RAM, but startup apps again become slow to open. Same thing happens when I stop the Superfetch service altogether. Any other value causes the annoyance to reappear upon booting.

Does anyone know if there's a way to disable Superfetch without causing startup applications to open slowly?
 
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Er, maybe I'm mistaken but no. The whole point in Superfetch is that it caches your recent apps in memory. Disable the service and that stops, obviously.

If you power your machine down, consider hibernating instead. This saves the contents of memory out to disk, so when you power your machine back on it restores it in it's entirety (complete with superfetch cache). The result is no hdd churning.
 
You have 4GB ram and a decent system, why are you changing SF settings? they do not need to be touched at all as SF learns how you use your PC and will add and remove apps from the SF system over the course of time so it's continually learning.
 
Yes, leave superfetch alone. Hibernation is good advice. Consider tweaking your indexing settings too if you don't make much use search functions.
 
Superfetch is one of Vista's best features. Why disable it?

And yes... superfetch IS the prefetcher... it's just 100x better than the prefetcher ever was in previous versions of Windows which is why they renamed it "super.. fetch" instead. Gimmicky name, sure... but the actual functionality it provides is dead serious.
 
Have a look at indexing instead as that might be the reason for the HDD activity. I think the service is called Windows Search. Disable that and try that out.
 
I'm an avid tweaker, so I have disabled every service I can get away with.

I enjoy having my startup apps loading quickly, but do not like the hard drive churning. If I could choose exactly which apps to Superfetch, then I might like it more. I personally do not notice much of a benefit from having Superfetch enabled except boot up time. XP was perfect without the HDD churning (but I'm not going back, before you say anything).

So I've got a batch file running on startup as administrator with the command "net stop superfetch" (doesn't disable Superfetch altogether, just stops the service until next reboot). UAC confirmation pops up, but it'll have to do until I get Windows 7 with SSD(s).

Hibernation seems to be more trouble than it's worth with my motherboard. Half the time it just reboots when I try to resume, other times my network card stops functioning etc.
 
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With the rig you're running you should notice the benefits of superfetch a good week or so after having the OS running. I agree that the HD grinding is irritating (especially in vista) but it means instant appearing apps, compared to XP's sluggishness I find.

Do you leave the PC running 24/7 or do you reboot often? I tend to reboot after a week or two so its fair to say that I rarely see the 'grind effect', and only the performance boost.
 
I do lots of cold-booting to save power. Used to have it on 24 / 7 when file-sharing, but have since discovered how pointless that all is with our mediocre upload bandwidth on UK residential broadband. I may give Superfetch another chance one day.
 
sleep mode only powers the ram, so no fans or disks are active (pc looks like it's off)

takes about 2 seconds to power on and resume back into windows, and you keep your superfetch data
 
I had constant disk thrashing in Windows 7 RC and that was the WMedia library media sharing thingy. So I disabled it. Does Vista have the same?
 
thought everyone used S3 :p

been using it since Windows 98SE

look in bios for sleep mode, there's S1 (fans blaring CPU still active) and there's S3 (only ram is kept 'active', so pc appears off)
 
Superfetch only issues low priority read requests to the hard disk. So, even if you happen to have a particularly loud hard disk where you can hear every single head seek movement, it won't affect performance.

It can be irritating but that's all it is. It's a psychological thing because for historical reasons you still kind of believe that when the hard disk is seeking it will still slow the PC down. But that just isn't the case for so many reasons these days.

I upgraded from some old'ish Seagate 500GB drives to some Western Digital 640GB Black Edition (AALS) and they are about 90% quieter in seeking. They are so quiet in fact that you can only hear them seek if you put your ear to the case... So now I can't hear a thing and Superfetch no longer irritates my ears after I've freshly rebooted. I say that, because Superfetch only ever thrashes the disk immediately after a reboot. It does this in attempt to prepare the PC for use whilst you're still probably making a coffee or whatever.
 
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