Vista - Readyboost cache problem

Too late, I followed BlackHawk7188's advice, and it worked. It still starts up normally. Thank you!

dont disable readyboost your pc will take three times longer too boot up , it not JUST readyboost it also incorporates readyboot which caches your bootup/startup items

you just need to format your usb stick

Disabling readyboot will not effect start up time, I have it disabled on my laptop and its never ran smoother... I even use less resources...

But as stated above, formatting the stick will erase everything. Try that.

ReadyBoot
Windows Vista uses the same boot-time prefetching as Windows XP did if the system has less than 512MB of memory, but if the system has 700MB or more of RAM, it uses an in-RAM cache to optimize the boot process. The size of the cache depends on the total RAM available, but is large enough to create a reasonable cache and yet allow the system the memory it needs to boot smoothly.
After every boot, the ReadyBoost service (the same service that implements the ReadyBoost feature just described) uses idle CPU time to calculate a boot-time caching plan for the next boot. It analyzes file trace information from the five previous boots and identifies which files were accessed and where they are located on disk. It stores the processed traces in %SystemRoot%\Prefetch\Readyboot as .fx files and saves the caching plan under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Ecache\Parameters in REG_BINARY values named for internal disk volumes they refer to.
The cache is implemented by the same device driver that implements ReadyBoost caching (Ecache.sys), but the cache's population is guided by the ReadyBoost service as the system boots. While the boot cache is compressed like the ReadyBoost cache, another difference between ReadyBoost and ReadyBoot cache management is that while in ReadyBoot mode, other than the ReadyBoost service's updates, the cache doesn't change to reflect data that's read or written during the boot. The ReadyBoost service deletes the cache 90 seconds after the start of the boot, or if other memory demands warrant it, and records the cache's statistics in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Ecache\Parameters\ReadyBootStats, as shown in Figure 2. Microsoft performance tests show that ReadyBoot provides performance improvements of about 20 percent over the legacy Windows XP prefetcher.

Dudes, it's fixed. End of story. How do I edit the thread title to say PROBLEM SOLVED?

Maybe it is just my machine and set-up. But I do remember reading a thread on another forum about Superfetch, a lot of the users disabled it and had smoother running machines. I know Superfetch is a completely different service, but they act in the same way.

I wonder if the greater the memory you have, the less difference ReadyBoost will make. It does help, but USB 2.0 with media is not going to be faster than volatile memory.

Don't get me wrong - I use ReadyBoost. I just never compared the difference.