Friday, December 10, 2010

Clean Prefetch In Windows XP

Prefetch folder is used for speeding up your system. The way it does is by doing the following:

1. Windows XP is configured to prefetch (Cache) application and program components so that when you load them to memory; it appears to be very quick.

2. Windows XP loads all associated files, libraries and pointers necessary to run the program in advance, the preloaded subset makes your system appear quicker

3. When unattended prefetch can also SLOW DOWN YOUR COMPUTER:

4. Windows XP will retain a copy of a portion of the program in the prefetch folder even if you only use it one time, which might not be usefull. Since you may not use the program again, you may impact the performance of your system by having portions of a program you do not use, and it just stays there in your system's memory.

5. XP systems with very low hardware resources (such as memory and hard disk space) will definitely be affected by an over-bloated prefetch folder.

How to clean prefetch folder?

Click Start--> Click 'RUN'--> Type 'Prefetch'--> Press Enter.
Delete all the files in the prefetch windows that appears and exit the screen.

OR

Open My computer--> Double click on the operating system drive--> Open the windows folder and search for PREFETCH--> Double click on it, Open the folder and delete all the files in that folder.


4 comments:

  1. Is there difference between computer cache and Internet browser cache ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, there is a difference. Internet cache is always stored in %temp% or Temp, however PREFETCH is something that stores the local machine or the computer cache.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How often do we have clean Prefetch? If we do it on daily basis will that not effect system performance?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Cleaning prefetch everyday is not recommended and please do not do it, as the system perfomance will be low, it is recommended that you clean prefetch once in two weaks. And that should work absolutely.

    ReplyDelete

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