http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2003/04/beware-of-bogus...

Update, March 2005: This �tip� just won�t die. It still appears all over the Internet, including at some places that should know better. We revisited the topic for the second edition of Windows XP Inside Out and found that cleaning out the Prefetch folder still does nothing positive for performance. If you think otherwise, get a stopwatch and run your own tests.

Eight years on.

In reply to a post by wingco1:

Would it speed up a very slow XP system?

Doubt it. Defragmentation doesn't normally achieve very much with NTFS and modern disk drives.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by wingco1:

Would it speed up a very slow XP system?

Doubt it. Defragmentation doesn't normally achieve very much with NTFS and modern disk drives.

Actually as much as I am a fan of leaving Windows to its own devices -- defragmentation is still very important on Windows and NTFS volumes with conventional disk drives, and even with SSD too (but that needs to be addressed differently). Fragmentation levels can quickly get out of hand. That is why the built in defragger is scheduled to run every week out of the box as well as when the computer is idle at any time.

Not only that, there are measurable and noticeable performance gains by using 3rd party defragmenting tools compared to the built in one. The built in one has a tendency to address file fragmentation ONLY and has very little regard for the placement of the files.

However back to this topic in hand when people complain of slow Windows systems there is something usually far more wrong with it than just being a bit fragmented!

Edited by Pipexer (Sun 07-Apr-13 01:13:13)

Defragging despite some people's reservations can help out, but how much depends on exactly what is fragmented within your system.

In my experience, one of the biggest slow downs on an XP system is the Windows Registry. If you think about it, it's just a massive database which the system will attempt to load up, scroll through, page bits and bobs of etc etc. As well as the system registry, each user account has it's own section which over time can become bloated and full of outdated references.

Quite often, some 'experts' will just say perform a clean install and your system will once again fly. Now that is true, but it's a pain having to re-install various apps which is the main reason why people don't do it more often.

Here's a quick fix I used to do on old machines where I couldn't be bothered to re-install and it creates the single biggest speed improvement over any other hint (other than the clean install).

Create a new user account !

Job done...

More often or not when applications were installed they were installed for 'all users' but there will be exceptions whereby you might need to re-install or re-configure an existing application.
You might also have to move over any mail accounts if you've relied upon POP'ing mail.

But if you want a quick fix speed improvement, don't want to re-install the whole OS and need access to something in the old profile, just create a new profile. The new account won't have the same registry bloat, if your disk space is sufficient, the newly created registry hive will be contiguous (hopefully, if space permits).

Someone has already mentioned CCleaner and that's great for cleaning up your system, they also provide a great Defrag tool. If you registry is bloated, that too can become fragmented and there are tools available to clean the registry out which work better than a Defrag/CCleaner pass on it's own.

Of course, the number of configurations and states of PC's is infinite so as always, YMMV

Chris

For compacting the Registry I use the freeware NTREGOPT.EXE. Have used for years on XP, about every 3 months, and it is v. effective. It now works on Vista & Win7 and probably Win8.

It's worked for me! Its something I usually do when fixing relatives' laptops and whatnot - I mean 10 year old machines which have never been defragmented or been taken care of, but would require too much effort to format and do a reinstall - possibly similar to the OP's situation.

From what I have seen, Windows will not delete files by itself from the prefetch, so eventually it will clog up with hundreds of .pf files, including those from uninstalled applications. Those files will still be checked at boot, and will also fragment over time. Rather than picking out what has been uninstalled, and then defragmenting the remainder, I just wipe out the lot. In this situation, with an old, heavily fragmented machine, it definitely works. I didn't have a stop watch out, but I didn't have the time to make a cup of tea anymore while waiting for it to boot.

For every article that says deleting the prefetch is bad, there is another saying it is good. I would be very interested to see a proper study of it. You should try and see how it goes though. Particularly for newer systems with SSDs, it would be of interest to see if disabling prefetching entirely has a positive effect - I believe it may well do.

The article that I linked to provided benchmarks proving that this is a myth. It is, indeed, true that websites that recommend this change never provide benchmarks.

The article also provided a link to a blog by Mark Russinovich explaining the benefits of prefetch. That guy knows more about Windows' internals than anyone else I know.

I tried a registry defragger (one month trial), and it did improve things slightly, but it was really a 'use once' thing, given the trial period. It didn't hurt, is all I can really add. I was very, very wary of which one I picked, so that too might be a factor in avoiding registry defraggers.

Kaspersky blocks that link for me. Got another?

Another NTREGOPT.EXE or just google NTREGOPT.EXE.