Solved Superfetch on or off?

[boohbah]

Iv'e just disabled mine as it was slowing the laptop down considerably, i was facing constant freezes and programs taking ages to open, switching superfetch off has sped the system considerably, ive read a few articles that advocate the use of superfetch,so i would like more info based on members experiences.
ive run some progs at the same time and what would normally open slow and freeze the laptop when trying to open multi progs ,
they have run fine with decent opening speeds. photoshop for instance opened in half the time, easily half probably more

the only thing i havent checked is the boot speed, will check in a few mins, i have soluto installed so i will have an accurate test comparison for the last boot speeds.

what are your thoughts / experiences with superfetch.

edit; just rebooted and soluto informs me my boot speed was 6 seconds longer, this to me is minimal in comparison to the benefits recieved with the freed up ram.

 

[OldMX]

Leave it on.

 

[boohbah]

i'd prefer not to as i said before my system is running a lot better at present with it off. it is a laptop with only 2 gb of ram and slow, the ram and cpu were pretty much maxing out when running firefox and any other prog. i do have a lot of background stuff running but until recently it was ok ,sluggish but fine, since i installed the latest updates it runs slow.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Something else has to be causing the issue you are seeing. SuperFetch is one of the greatest advantages of Windows 7 over XP.

 

[boohbah]

yeah ,i figure it is something to do with the updates , however it seems more responsive with superfetch off. clearly i need to upgrade the ram , but for now its better than a frustratingly slow laptop.

 

[logicearth]

Something is awfully wrong with your computer. I have ran my laptop with 2GBs or RAM for years with Superfetch turned on ever since Windows Vista came out and I installed it. Never an issue.

 

[boohbah]

just turned it back on and the ram is ticking around 85% with photoshop and bitorrent open also firefox, it seems to have settled , not sure what is making it slow when it is ,will keep an eye on things.
i do have 104 processes running have stopped a few things like yahoo messenger and win live messenger,

 

[logicearth]

Superfetch (standby/cache) is not counted in the physical memory usage...so something other then Superfetch is consuming your RAM. I bet its your security software.

 

[boohbah]

MSE is pretty light on resources i thought.
to be honest i think there are too many things going on in the background for the ram i have , then when i open something that uses a fair bit of ram it slows things right down. having said that it wasn't too bad a couple of weeks ago, this is a recent thing that leads me to believe it was the recent updates. i would do a system restore but i will lose a lot of changes , so in a few weeks i will get some more ram , in the mean time i have cleaned it and run mbam, super antisypware and ccleaner. alls good just sluggish for now.

 

[Anthony]

Have you had a look at msconfig?

msconfig - boot faster and crash less.

1. Click on the Windows 7 start icon in the bottom left corner of your screen.

2. Type msconfig in the search box and then either press enter on your keyboard or double-click on the msconfig program that appears in the search results.

3. Windows 7 will launch Microsoft's System Configuration Utility. Click on the Startup tab.

4. This takes you to a page with a list of "startup items." Startup items are programs that are automatically loaded every time you turn on your computer. Some startup programs are absolutely necessary (ANTI VIRUS), others are simply a waste of RAM.

5. Click on the OK button.

6. A message will pop up telling you that you must restart your computer before these changes will take effect. Click on "Restart" and your computer will automatically reboot.

7. That's it! Your computer should now boot faster and crash less.

If you ever want to turn on any of the startup items you disabled with msconfig , just run msconfig again.

 

[boohbah]

thanks anthony, yeah i have ,i also use soluto which delays certain things from booting until the system is idle,

i managed to half my boot time and only have four items start at boot.

the things i have noticed use a bit of ram are google drive ,dropbox, skydrive and cx storage drive.
i can pause cx and dropbox from syncing but it doesnt make a huge difference.
bittorrent is a huge hog along with firefox, i have a bit of kit called firemin which allocates more cpu than ram to run firefox, really handy .
its not too bad at present so i will keep it monitored. like i say ive cleaned it and used soluto to delay or remove items from boot.
i also have defrag set to run when idle so i may try changing that and see if it makes any difference.

 

[w1dpc]

just turned it back on and the ram is ticking around 85% with photoshop and bitorrent open also firefox, it seems to have settled , not sure what is making it slow when it is ,will keep an eye on things.
i do have 104 processes running have stopped a few things like yahoo messenger and win live messenger,

104!!! wow i have only 49 processes running and to me that's way to many..

 

[Alejandro85]

I don't have it neither, and really don't miss it a bit. Can't feel any difference really, but don't know if that's because of superfetch or that I have more RAM. If you've tried both things (changing just superfetch) and saw a noticeable difference, then I would settle with the faster one. Superfetch is very memory hungry and may be conflicting with another programs, and considering you have 104 programs running on a average sized RAM may make a good explanation for superfetch having a bad effect.

This post just made me curious. What would happen if I disable it in my work computer? Time will tell.

 

[DeaconFrost]

the things i have noticed use a bit of ram are google drive ,dropbox, skydrive and cx storage drive.
i can pause cx and dropbox from syncing but it doesnt make a huge difference.
bittorrent is a huge hog along with firefox, i have a bit of kit called firemin which allocates more cpu than ram to run firefox, really handy .
its not too bad at present so i will keep it monitored. like i say ive cleaned it and used soluto to delay or remove items from boot.
i also have defrag set to run when idle so i may try changing that and see if it makes any difference.

I'm reading up on your usage, and for a system with 2 GB, you are using a lot of "background" apps. All of those cloud drive apps, IM programs, this firemin thing (never a good idea to mess with cpu priority and things like that), etc will all cripple a normal system, especially one with only 2 GB of memory. I wouldn't say Superfetch is your issue. I'm betting on the extreme amount of background apps you have running at all times.

Superfetch is very memory hungry

It isn't memory hungry because it doesn't count towards used memory. The cache is cleared if a program needs to use more memory...so it has no negative effect on memory usage.

 

[boohbah]

although i have now 103 processes running most are very low in usage, like winamp agent and messenger plus. nothing too major, unless its a program i open.
i should have updated after yesterday evening, i ran super antispyware and it found something related to a weather widget i had very recently tried out (
Adware.Somoto
C:\USERS\LOIS\DESKTOP\WORLDWEATHEREN.GADGET.EXE).
once removed the system is really fast and ticking over at around 20% cpu and 56% memory, a vast improvement. firefox has stopped having issues as a result also, some tracking cookies were removed.
so after last night and most of today to see the new improved version is still running smoothly i guess we can say it is , superfetch is back on and everything is fine, so ..
the answer to the question is superfetch ON,
although as soon as superfetch went on the memory went up to 70% ,will keep it monitored , but its clear more ram is required.

thanks for all your input guys.

 

[Sentinel72]

i find the startup manager in ccleaner to be much better than msconfig,plus msconfig does not show you all of the programs set to run at startup.I would also suggest visiting blackvipre.com to see which services can be disabled etc.

 

[GeneO]

The sysinternals Autoruns lets you disable any service or startup items and covers them all.

Autoruns for Windows

 

[DBone]

As I type this on my 2GB W7 x64 machine, I have 29 processes running, including Chrome!

 

[shaneblack]

Be Careful of Windows Updates, Some may Hurt performance. I myself don't use very many, I've noticed my laptop dosen't like some of them and runs worse if too many are installed. They caused a slowdown in performance which made me uninstall at lot of them just to get back some speed. Now its running much faster without them. I'm talking about performance updates not security updates. A good rule of thumb is that if your computer isn't running 7 very good then they can help, But if your computer already runs fast, those updates may have a negitive effect. I started keeping my own performance log recently so I could see where I'm at performance wise and can keep track of everything I do and I pin point problems that may arise.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Be Careful of Windows Updates, Some may Hurt performance. I myself don't use very many, I've noticed my laptop dosen't like some of them and runs worse if too many are installed.

On some forums, there would be a temporary ban for a user posting something like this. Windows Updates should not be avoided. They are released for very specific, important reasons. While we can't force you to do something on your own computer, for the love of all things holy, please don't advise others to skip Windows Updates.