Windows XP Prefetch Control

[Clocker]

This looks interesting:

http://www.jester2k.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/jester2kpcc.htm

C

 

[Adcadet]

The Lions? The Lions? Ug.

But hey, at least they're not the Vi-queens.

Ok, but to prefetch - interesting. Thought I'd wonder why MS would include that service if it didn't improve performance. Is it in Win2K? Perhaps that's one reason why XP is more resource intensive.

 

[Groltz]

I always alter the value of that setting in the registry after installing WinXP. I use setting "2"
Default seems to be "3" (WinXP Pro)

Here is the info I have on it which came from a tweak guide somewhere and that I have stored:

Logical Prefetcher in WinXP

Along with WinXP a new enhancement to the memory management was made. It is called the Logical Prefetcher and it can
make boot time and application start time faster. The Logical Prefetcher records disk usage in certain scenarios(Bootup,
Application Start), and when the same scenario reappear, it loads all the data needed for that scenario from disk to memory,
before the data is requested.

The behavior of the Prefetcher is controlled with this DWORD registry key :

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Control \Session Manager\Memory Management \PrefetchParameters]
EnablePrefetcher = 3 (Disabled = 0, Application = 1, BootUp = 2, Application AND BootUp = 3)


*note - The only documentation I can find refers to settings 0-3. There are several guides that suggest using 5 as the setting
and one popular tweak program uses this setting. I have used this setting successfully for quite some time.

--Steve

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[blakerwry]

What are the differences in your boot times? have you tested?

I ran the bootVis tool and it took like 1/4th off my time. I think my boot time is around 49secs now after I got all my crap(drivers, software, etc) installed. ...Now if only I could make my RAID card BIOS go faster..