To Prefetch or Not To Prefetch
April 27, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
If you’ve been using your computer for very long you’ve probably experienced the time where you’re sitting in front of it and think, “This use to be so much quicker back in the day.” What happened? Things get clogged up and mucked up and sometimes you just need a couple of tweaks to get a bit more pep in your system’s step.
Windows XP Pro Prefetch Folder
One of those tweaks you can do is to delete your prefetch files and this has been said to improve your reboot time. What the prefetch routine does is look at the applications you use and creates pointer index files to the files those applications will need so that Windows can access them and start-up those programs quickly.
There’s a bit of a debate on if this is actually a tweak worth doing or not. In my opinion it does help. The slower prefetch experience Ed Bott noticed is due (in my opinion) that upon the first reboot of the system the prefetch files are getting rebuilt and identified as needed. I don’t think you’ll see the immediate effects until the following reboots.
It’s also my opinion that this helps because you may have started programs months ago that you no longer use and Windows is wasting resources in identifying where those programs and files are located to boot up quicker.
If you’re interested in seeing if this will work for your needs, you can follow these instructions for emptying your Prefetch folder on your Windows XP machine.
What’s been your experience with refreshing your prefetch files?
