Disabling Superfetch Is Not Working...

Hi guys, I've been doing some research and learning about Superfetch and what it does. I understand the philosophy behind it...such as..."unused Ram is wasted Ram," etc, etc. Personally, I have to say I disagree with that Philosophy for various reasons.

When I use my PC for a while and have multiple programs open over time. I find that my "Free Ram" is quickly dropped down to 700 - 800mb or less. This causes issues while browsing the web. If my Ram is that low, I can't open that many multiple browser tabs. Not to mention have multiple programs open at the same time.

I mean...what's the point in having Multiple Core Processors if you can't even have the benefit of using them? The single biggest argument I've seen so far is that Windows 7 frees up Ram as you need it. So, it creates yet another process to lag the computer even further? Bad Philosophy.

Another reason that's a bad philosophy is because of Video Editors as well as Gamers. Those of you who are in the fields of heavy gaming such as Minecraft and Skyrim...know what I'm talking about. This lack of free Ram..plus more processes firing off because Windows is trying to free up the Ram...makes for a bad gaming experience...perhaps no gaming experience at all.

For this very reason...I've come to my issue. I've tried everything I could find on the subject of disabling Superfetch...Prefetch...etc, etc...yet it's still not working. When ever I restart my PC...is the only time that my Ram seems to free up and go back to Normal. I do not want to Restart my PC every time in order to play a game or just to free up Ram.

I've set the Regedit of both Superfetch and Prefetch to 0, then went back and changed them to 2 so it will only cache start up files. Each time, I've rebooted my PC. Anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? Perhaps there is a better Operating System out there that I can use to play Minecraft on etc, etc? I'm open to suggestions.

OS - Windows 7 - 64-bit Ultimate
Graphics - NVIDIA - GeForce - GTX 260 - 768mb
Ram - 4gig - DDR - 800mhz
Motherboard - ASUS - A8N SLI - Premium
Harddrive - 300 gig - Maxtor
Processor - AMD Athlon X2 - Dual Core - 3800+ - 2.01ghz

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
Wouldn't make more sense to add another stick of ram :/
Possibly upgrade your video card as well depending on your power supply ?

I would think about upgrading the whole kit and caboodle.

Hi Thrashzone and Gator...

Yes, I've considered upgrading my system and actually plan on doing that as time and money allows. At the moment...I'm a bit low on resources. I also want to get a laptop to travel with eventually. So, Superfetch will certainly be a problem if I'm to travel and create video content.

Come on give us a break.

Their is nothing wrong with prefetch/Superfetch.
Your system is and was not designed to do the things your are trying to do all at the time in a speedy fashion.

Prefetch is need on all systems. You will need less of it if you have a 64 bit system with lots of ram.

I don't understand using Windows 7 Ultimate 32 for games and web searching.

OS - Windows 7 - 64-bit Ultimate
Graphics - NVIDIA - GeForce - GTX 260 - 768mb
Ram - 4gig - DDR - 800mhz
Motherboard - ASUS - A8N SLI - Premium
Harddrive - 300 gig - Maxtor
Processor - AMD Athlon X2 - Dual Core - 3800+ - 2.01ghz

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rlh111 said:

Hi Thrashzone and Gator...

Yes, I've considered upgrading my system and actually plan on doing that as time and money allows. At the moment...I'm a bit low on resources. I also want to get a laptop to travel with eventually. So, Superfetch will certainly be a problem if I'm to travel and create video content.

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That all depends what laptop you buy.

@laybackbear - I have a 64 bit operating system.

And yes...I'm aware that depends on the laptop I end up buying. However, starting off...I will not have thousands to shell into a high end gaming laptop.

(edit) - Also...before I installed Windows 7...I had Windows XP and had no problem jumping back and forth...playing Minecraft or opening multiple browser tabs.

Your system specs.

My System Specs OS Windows 7 32 Bit

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How much money you do or do not have to spend is absolutely none of our business.

There again what XP use to do is also not the point. You have Ultimate for what ever reason. That is a lot of operating system to play game and use the internet.

If one wants do to certain things on a computer in a reasonable fashion one must buy a computer that can do just that in a reasonable fashion.

Ten year old hardware will not keep up with today's standards of getting things done. It's just that simple.

Your motherboard max. memory is 4 gb so you have no room to grow with your system.

@Layback Bear...please read it again. In my post...I state I'm using a 64-bit OS. Not 32-bit.

(edit) Also, I understand what you're saying about older equipment. I have had this PC for quite some time and with XP, used to be able to record Minecraft. Nowadays...I can hardly do that with Windows 7 running. Perhaps I should just go back to Windows XP, but I assume I'd still have to get XP 64-bit version to run the 4 Gig of Ram. Then again...I run the risk of my Video Card not being compatible.

I read your post and saw the 64 bit. I also read your My System Specs and it indicates 32 bit.

The problem with using XP is it's a huge security risk.

I see you have updated your specs in My System Specs. That is good.

Just do the best you can do with what you got until you can upgrade.

Possibly you should look into windows 8 it's supposed to take up less resources because it has no aero features to soak it up,
But who knows you might already be using a non aero desktop theme :/

One odd thing is people that believe having a browser and several other programs open and still have a game open think they're doing all of the above
You waste your own resources just for the sake of wasting them,
I suppose you should be happy these games work at all

If your system slows down what happens if it comes to a screeching halt via BSOD

@Layback Bear...Yes, I saw what you were looking at eventually. I ended up changing that to reflect the current state. Windows XP was by far the most Stable of all the Windows Operating systems. At least to my current Knowledge. That's why so many people still use it to this day. It's stable and doesn't use much in the way of resources. You don't have a bazillion services running in the background eating up your Ram.

With the current settings I have...Windows 7 alone uses about 800mb give or take of Ram just on start up. That's about the standard for me at any given time. That's with all the other programs in the Start Up folder turned off. Windows is not a very efficient operating system by any means. It's far from it. I wouldn't even call it the most stable.

From what I hear about OSX...people love it. It's so much better than Windows...according to the Fanboys and anyone I've ever talked to that owns a Mac.

So, I think it's safe to say that "unused Ram is wasted Ram" is a flawed Philosophy. Just like many other things that I can't go into details here because of the rules of the forum. See, people think that they know stuff...including myself...cough cough ahem...only to end up finding out that they're wrong. So many people are complaining about the Superfetch and the whole Cache Ram features. I mean, why not just have it use Ram, then release it when it's done? That's what it's supposed to.

After all, it may not be active, but every time Windows tries to free up Ram, it adds another process to the fray. An unneeded one at that. Also, not to mention..if Windows gets it wrong...they have to guess again. Then if they get it wrong again, they have to guess again. So, is it really giving people that much of a boost in speed for the added headache? I'd wager not.

Call me Crazy...but the Vast Majority has been known to be wrong about things in the past. All I know at the moment is that it's too early for me to say whether I'm right or wrong. There is no data that backs up these claims of a significant boost in efficiency when it comes to Superfetch.

(edit) (@ThrashZone) - Yeah, I'm grateful these Games work. No doubt it's due to the dual core and the upgraded graphics card. I originally had a 256mb graphics card. As far as the theme goes that I'm using...I'm using the Classic Theme currently. A lot of things are disabled to save on resources. Otherwise...I'm sure I'd be using a heck of a lot more I've heard of some people using 1.2 - 1.3 gig of Ram. I'm not sure that Windows 8 would actually be any better or not. Especially considering that I'd have to Upgrade my PC completely at that level just to get Windows 8 to work properly. All new stuff.

."unused Ram is wasted Ram,"

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I agree with that philosophy 100%.

This is not some new and half thought out idea that Microsoft is trying out. It certainly did not originate with Prefetch and Superfetch. It is a guiding principle of all modern versions of Windows, plus Mac OS, plus all but the smallest distributions of Linux. It is a mature technology, the result of an enormous amount of research, development, and testing.

The first known reference to an OS following these principles is in a paper dating back to the late 1950's with the first systems using these principles coming out a few years later. Through the 1960's there was much experimentation and refinement of the basic concepts. By the end of the decade it was generally agreed to be the best design then devised. I will not mention the general name for such an OS as the term is widely misunderstood.

The basic memory management concept in such an OS is caching. All modern systems have multiple levels of data storage:
1. CPU registers
2. Level 1 data cache
3. Level 2 data cache
4. RAM
5. Hard drive

The hard drive offers plentiful and cheap storage. But it is slow. Each higher level offer much better performance, but at an equally higher cost, This means that storage at the highest levels must be kept small. A modern hard drive may have storage for trillions of bytes while the CPU registers only a few thousand.

The basic concept of caching is that the higher levels of storage keep a copy of the most frequently accessed data of the lower levels. Accessing the lower levels is very expensive in terms of performance and must be avoided whenever possible. Management of the upper 3 levels of storage is internal to the CPU. RAM and disk storage is managed by the OS.

It might seem odd that RAM is mentioned as a form of cache. But in reality almost all RAM in a computer is being used as some form of cache. At least it should be. A basic concept of any kind of cache is that it should fill itself as rapidly as possible with the most often accessed data of whatever is being cached. Any empty portion of cache is not fulfilling it's responsibility and is a crime against performance.

Freeing memory is a simple and fast process. On the other hand, loading data from the hard drive into RAM is a vastly more complex and slow process, even with an SSD. Any intelligently designed OS is going to avoid doing that whenever possible. For that reason the OS will avoid freeing memory until the last possible moment. The data might be needed later. There is virtually no cost in doing this while the cost of reloading data that was prematurely freed is great. That is what caching is all about. Caching contributes greatly to the performance of a modern OS.

Much of memory management in a modern OS is about managing caching. Everything else is just details.

Sorry for the length of this post. But this is such an important concept in a modern OS and one that is so often misunderstood.

Take a read through this tutorial by Brink. It has a lot of good information. You might find something that suites you.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11728-optimize-windows-7-a.html

Just keep in mind; no tweaking will compensate for lack of hardware.
Window 7 works quite well with 4 gigs of ram if you just let Windows 7 manage memory.
I would suggest putting your XP hat aside and put on the Windows 7 hat and take a little time to learn Windows 7. You do not need to tweak Windows 7 like we all did using XP.

Their are books wrote on how Windows 7 manages ram. It's complicated but does work quite well.

Even after all that I've read and all that you guys have shared, I'm still not sure Superfetch is a good idea. As most Gamers can relate...when you have a heavy intense game such as Skyrim...the games will not recognize the Cached Ram as usable Ram. This causes major problems with Game Play in general.

This just sounds like to me a Useless thing that Windows and Major OS' are trying to force on people and makes for an overall bad experience. I did not have this problem actually until after a recent Windows Restore. I've had 30+ Windows open in my Browser before and had no problems at all. I used to be able to Record Minecraft and not lag, now I lag.

Perhaps what I need is a repair. I mean...what's the point in even having a feature to disable it...if the Caching still happens? I understand that some caching may be needed on a basic level...but that's it. It should be up to the User which Ram gets used and when. 90% of Gamers will likely agree.

@LMiller7 - I have to disagree with you. Just because they have Research on this...doesn't mean it's a "good thing" for the average users. Microsoft...as well as numerous other OS system...Social Media sites, Webpages in general, as well as numerous other software has continuously tried to feed the Masses with useless crap. It is not up to Microsoft to decide which Ram gets used and when. It is up to the User. When a program is used...it takes up Ram. When a program is close out...it should free up Ram. That's the way it works...or should work. Only a Geek, and I don't mean to be offensive by that, would have a need for it with all the tweaking that they do. The average user does not tweak their systems.

@Layback Bear - Thanks for the link. I'm sure some of that will actually help me. In the mean time...it looks like I'll have to find my answers elsewhere. Perhaps in a new OS...at least until I can get my PC upgraded to a New PC entirely. I might just have to go back to Windows XP on this Machine. Superfetch is such a waste.

It isn't prefetch or superfetch that is using your RAM. Sure they will pre-populate your RAM based on usage patterns, but that is not why your RAM is occupied. Windows 7 will keep your programs resident in memory even after you close them. That way if you open a program again in the near future you will not take a hit loading it into memory again. The memory pages of these closed programs do not show up as free memory, but if a program needs memory and there is not enough free memory, it will use those pages. It works well.

If you are really experiencing performance issues and not just suffering angst over the size of what is reported "free", it probably isn't Windows memory management but more likely you don't have enough RAM. 4GB is not very much.

When a program is used...it takes up Ram. When a program is close out...it should free up Ram. That's the way it works...or should work.

Click to expand...

When an application closes only the private use RAM is freed. But the programs code, including all DLLs it has used, will go to the Standby list. It is ready if the application is reopened and it is also available to any other application that needs it. This is nothing new but has been a part of NT from the very beginning in 1993. There is no way to disable this. Linux and Mac OS also work much the same.

I agree with this behavior 100%.

rlh111 we are not here to argue whether Windows uses ram the way we want it to. Ram usage in Window 7 is designed into the system by some very smart people.
Like it or not liking it doesn't matter. It works for the rest of the users in the world quite well. You are not going to tinker your system into a better way of using the ram in your system.

Okay guys...by that same philosophy...let's make the PC use every bit of Processing Power it has. Let's make the PC use every bit of Harddrive space is has. See what my point is? This is a stupid idea and needs to be gotten rid of. The only reason people who have any sense at all upgrade their Ram...is to have Ram available at the beckon call. Not what Microsoft thinks your going to use next. All it takes is for a Human to do something different, then Ram Caching becomes useless. Ram is meant for the operation of the application itself...not for populating the entire system with Ram Cache that just slows down your PC.

Also...4 gig of Ram is plenty. For the average user that is. Even a gamer today can utilize 4 gig of Ram. There is really no reason to have much more than that unless you just want to pimp your PC. Bragging Rights...that's why people have 16 gig or 32 gig of ram. The average user and gamer included will never use that much.

So, it's a flaw in the system that Microsoft thinks it's smart. You guys say Microsoft is pretty smart...but how many failed systems have they had now? What about Internet Explorer...bet you don't use it...