Although many people complain that Windows Vista is a lot slower than Windows XP, this does not need to be the case. A lot has to do with your system’s configuration. Depending on your PC specifications for example, you might need to disable some of the graphical enhancements. On the other hand, Windows Vista has quite a few improvements that actually help speed up the overall performance.
One of these improvements in Windows Vista is called SuperFetch. This feature can really speed up Windows Vista. The basic concept is that applications and files are loaded faster as a result of an advanced caching mechanism.
SuperFetch can speed up Windows Vista, but it does consume computer resources: memory, CPU and disk. So it is good that we can execute some control over the feature and tweak it to our preferences. The steps below show you how you can control what SuperFetch does:
- From the Windows Start menu, select Run.
- In the Run box, type regedit and click OK.
- In the Registry Editor, locate the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
- Right-click the entry named EnableSuperFetch, and in the popup menu select Modify.
- Next, specify what SuperFetch should do:
- To completely disable the SuperFetch feature, enter the value 0.
- To optimize only application startup, enter the value 1.
- To optimize only the computer startup process, enter the value 2.
- To optimize both application startup and the computer startup, enter the value 3.
- Close the Registry Editor. Select Exit from the File menu.
When done, click OK.
Use this control over Windows Vista SuperFetch to tweak the caching operation and maximize your computer performance. If you have sufficient memory, setting 3 will give you best performance. If you do not have that much memory in your system and need the memory for executing applications, you can experiment with setting 1 and 2 to determine what works best for you.
This is a great idea. I prefetch just startup
and vista runs much better. The whole prefetch idea just slows down my computer too much.
Vista really takes to long to do anything.
Thanks for the tip!
If only we could tel Vista which applications to prefetch, that would be even better…
Hi
I cant get this working. I changed it into “2″
But it does not work.
I have Vista Ultimate with 6gigabyte of DDR3-ram
After changeing it to “2″ i tryed reboot my computer. But when Windows started i had 2000Cached memory and 3000Free memory. After a wile(5min) all my Free momory had been cached memory. So now i have 5GB of cached memory and 0mb free memory.
Anyone have any tip? Thanks Magnus
(Sorry my bad english)
Well it seems to work a little bit, now i have 553mb Free momory, but cant i get any more?
Do i really need 4433mb Cached memory?
@Magnus – The memory usage is very dynamic. Vista will use free memory for caching, so applications can start faster. But if memory is needed, Vista will dump some of the cache to free up memory.
As a result, you can not really go by the hard numbers shown in the Task Manager.
Your internal RAM is really available to applications when needed.
Regarding SuperFetch it is better to look at the performance difference with the different settings.
Hope this addresses your concern.
Anthony
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Great tip. After I reading this article, I try it on my laptop. I like to optimize only the computer startup process by enter the value 2 in registry. I feel windows is start up faster and not impact the processing while working.
Windows 7 SuperFetch Registry Change Can Be Found In This Location (Key)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Same place.. Same changes.. Looking for Prefetcher FAQ..