> >how does one "clear" the prefetch? > > Drag the folder contents into the trash. It can do wonders.
Your advice is to empty the folder that Windows uses to boot and load apps more quickly? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc302206.aspx The legendary Mark Russinovich explains the prefetch: " How does this scheme provide a performance benefit? The answer lies in the fact that during typical system boot or application startup, the order of faults is such that some pages are brought in from one part of a file, then from another part of the same file, then pages are read from a different file, then perhaps from a directory, and so on. This jumping around results in moving the heads around on the disk. Microsoft has learned through analysis that this slows boot and application startup times. By prefetching data from a file or directory all at once before accessing another one, this scattered seeking for data on the disk is greatly reduced or eliminated, thus improving the overall time for system and application startup." http://blogs.msdn.com/ryanmy/archive/2005/05/25/421882.aspx "...it is a bad idea to periodically clean out that folder as some tech sites suggest. 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." You can either take advice from an engineer on the Windows Performance team, Mark Russinovich, or from the Mac guy. Your choice. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
