Vista Tutorial - disk thrashing

Anyone know where I could find any freeware that would troubleshoot why my
hard drive thrashs for five minutes after I boot up?

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On Sun, 04 May 2008 20:21:08 GMT, "jimb11 via WindowsKB.com"
<u25693@xxxxxx> wrote:
It "thrashes" while loading all of the services that are set to
"automatic" plus while all of the startup services that you can see by
running msconfig are loading/starting.

Look at both and choose what you want to start when Windows loads.

"jimb11 via WindowsKB.com" <u25693@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:83a9e96cce5ac@xxxxxxDisable the Windows Search service (Indexing) and also the Superfetch
service.

Superfetch is basically trying to predict what files you are likely to
access during the next session and loads them into RAM.

Problem is, in my experience the hard drive gets thrashed for 10 minutes
after every bootup and 99% of those files won't be accessed anyway. The
files you do access will be cached into a buffer anyway so it's a bit of a
pointless service.

FF

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.

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




"Freddy Flares" <blob@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:mrudnVeOIJr8zYPVnZ2dneKdnZydnZ2d@xxxxxx

"David P" <dgprozzo@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uYh6LanrIHA.3716@xxxxxxFull 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.
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.

On Sun, 04 May 2008 20:21:08 GMT, "jimb11 via WindowsKB.com"
<u25693@xxxxxx> wrote:
There are numerous services that start up. You may want to identify
these applications. If you have installed a lot of applications, then
you may get slow startups and shutdowns. Remove applications you no
longer need or use. Some may be getting online updates. Make sure
you hard drive has at least 20% free space and defrag your drive.