"David P" <dgprozzo@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uYh6LanrIHA.3716@xxxxxx
Quote:
> My computer always has a few minutes of disk activity ("thrashing" if you
> like) after bootup as it is loading programs and services. Seems like
> normal activity to me.
Full hard disk activity for minutes even after the desktop appears? I'm not
even doing anything, the system should just sit there waiting for me to ask
something of it. SuperFetch is not something I asked for, I'll have it
disabled thank you.
Quote:
>
> I wouldn't call Superfetch pointless. My Vista computer has always been
> more responsive than XP - on the same hardware. Possibly Superfetch it
> the reason.
>
> You might check out this:
>
> SuperFetch does more than caching. Windows Vista runs a SuperFetch service
> that analyzes your application behavior and usage patterns, meaning that
> it tracks which applications you request the most. A good example would be
> your activity as you start the PC in the morning: You launch Outlook to
> fetch email, a messenger, a web browser and probably additional
> applications such as a development environment. If you do this repeatedly
> and ideally in the same order, SuperFetch will recognize this and then
> proactively populate these applications into all available main memory the
> next time you start the PC. You should only wait for a few minutes before
> you commence work to give the SuperFetch service the time to "superfetch"
> your applications.
>
> The result is simple and impressive: As you return from your coffee run
> and launch your applications, they are available much quicker, as they
> already populate your main memory. Similar to conventional Windows
> caching, SuperFetch will not touch its cached data unless there is an
> application that requires main memory space. Windows will not prioritize
> the SuperFetch feature over memory requests by applications, as this would
> cause the memory management to swap data onto the swap file, which of
> course would slow down the whole system considerably.
>
> Simply spoke, SuperFetch tries to relocate application data from the slow
> hard drive into all available memory. It utilizes the available capacity
> to create a so-called warm memory state for the single purpose of making
> applications available almost instantaneously. However, SuperFetch needs a
> certain amount of main memory. At only 512 MB RAM size, the feature won't
> be very efficient, as Windows plus 2-3 applications will already eat up
> the total memory capacity. There won't be main memory space left to
> pre-cache application data. If you don't work with multiple applications
> at a time, 1 GB should be enough to see a positive impact of SuperFetch
> when compared to Windows XP. However, we experienced the best results at a
> main memory capacity of 2 GB - more won't hurt either.
>
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...yzed,1532.html
>
> Thing is even after a few weeks of Vista, SuperFetch is still scanning all
the nooks and crannies of my hard disc at every bootup, accessing thousands
of files that I haven't touched in months. That's got to be inefficient
surely.
A better idea would be a fast launcher item in the Start menu where I could
add programs/files of my choosing. Besides, if you've just made your coffee
and you want apps to start up faster, why not just stick 'em in Startup
anyway?
FF.