Windows 7 - question about prefetch

hi

i have a question about prefetch

well xp , after booting and after 1 or 2 minutes ,create the file NTOSBOOT-*.pf and after with this file and others optimaze the boot and the programs that start up

about Windows 7 , i did notice that after some time of idle , Windows 7 start to work and edit these files inside the folder prefetch AgGif*.db and a file *.bin

does somebody how does it work ?

i mean super prefetch starts to work after X (minutes) of idle ?
or start to work after X (minutes)


thanks
cheers

You can read more about superfetch which is the same as prefetch in Windows 7 here to answer you questions:

SuperFetch: How it Works & Myths

Windows Vista I/O technologies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

thanks
but is not all clear

after some mintues of idle , i can see Windows 7 scans for many files and after update the files i mentioned

And? Why is that a concern? If your computer is idle or in other words you are watching paint dry, should it not get some actual work down? Unless watching paint dry is actual work?

I would have to second Logic's question - specifically why is this an issue? You have posted about it, so something has piqued your curiosity.

I third it. What is the issue or real question?

Superfetch is working all the time, constantly evolving to make the computer more responsive to YOUR computing habits. It does not wait for idle time - it's job is to make your active time more productive.

Superfetch is a very good thing. Dinking with it is sure to have a negative impact on performance.

The OP has not been back here, but this thread caught my attention as I believe I found some corruption in my Netbook's Prefetch folder. It would not only show looonnng HDD access on boot as drugo described, but at odd times during use, e.g. launching a program, the Netbook HDD LED would illuminate and I'd be "locked-out" of using anything for a couple of minutes. I could move the mouse, but I couldn't do anything with it although if e.g. I did try to run something else (and it wouldn't respond immediately because it was cranking as I said) when the HDD activity was over the mouse clicks responded as if I'd queued them-up, with windows & programs popping-open one-after-another.

Anyway, once when this happened I stumbled-in to the Prefetch dir and noticed that the very large AgGl* files therein had been modified at the exact time I'd had the couple minutes of HDD activity & lockout. On a hunch, I stopped the Superfetch service and moved-out all of the Prefetch files (not however the Readyboot folder), changed my Registry settings for Prefetch & Superfetch to "boot files only" i.e. DWORD of 2, and rebooted, and the problem is gone! Clearly, something in the Prefetch folder was corrupted somehow.

There were two odd things about my Fetch settings, which according to other Windows 7 PCs I have should have looked like this:



Instead of the above, my key had EnablePrefetcher as 2, and EnableSuperfetch as 3, and there was another bizarre entry there called "SuperPrefetch" which was 0. I deleted that (could find NO reference to such a thing anywhere) and put both the other settings to 2, and as I said all is working properly now.

My questions: Can anyone speculate where the "SuperPrefetch" entry came from? Also, what might the implication of my settings being DIFFERENT have been? I can find no discussion of this aspect of the registry key i.e. the difference between Prefetcher and Superfetch and what-if-they-are-set-differently.