Slower reboot with Superfetch !

[flemur13013]

Using the Restart-Time.vbs script, my reboot time with Superfetch on was 42 or 43 seconds; with Superfetch off it's 40 seconds. I don't see/feel any speed difference with other programs starting, including big ones like Firefox or Photoshop.

Stock eMachines ET1831-07; NO SSD or RAID, etc.

Does anyone else have similar measurements regarding Superfetch?

 

[Corazon]

Give Superfetch a chance across multiple reboots. A single system (re)start is not enough for it to gather usage data and actually build up the cache.

I would suggest three or four reboots, with a bit of typical usage of the system inbetween each (don't just reboot 3-4 times in a row, that won't help much either).

Only then will you really be able to notice a performance boost.

 

[cluberti]

(It's actually 5 reboots). Recommendations include using xbootmgr from the WPT to do a boot optimization and clean up the prefetcher and SuperFetch data.

 

[logicearth]

from 42-43 seconds to 40 seconds...Are you serious? You forgot something important, Restart-Time.vbs, doesn't measure boot up time, it measures restart time. Which can vary greatly depending on what needs to close or be cleaned up.

I think you are grasping at straws.

 

[flemur13013]

So, no actual time measurements? I can't find any elsewhere on the web, either. Superfetch's speed improvement is beginning to sound like an urban legend.

I've booted dozens or hundreds of times with the current setup for the timing w/Superfetch, and several times with it off, which is always slightly faster. There were no SW changes, installs, etc, between the tests, of course. I boot, let it sit for a couple of minutes, then reboot. I've been in the computer biz since the 70s and know how to time things.

Stop-watch timing from the OS selection prompt (Win 7 or Win 7 PAE) is also about 2 sec faster with Superfetch turned off. (24 sec vs 22 sec). Superfetch was never faster.

from 42-43 seconds to 40 seconds...Are you serious?

Yup. Boot and reboot times are consistently faster w/o superfetch.

I think you are grasping at straws.

Why? Because 2 seconds is trivial? Why run a service that slows (re)boot time by 2 seconds and apparently doesn't do anything else?

 

[whs]

For a vanilla machine, you have excellent times. I would not worry about the rest.

 

[flemur13013]

For a vanilla machine, you have excellent times. I would not worry about the rest.

Yeah, it's a pretty low-end machine that I bought on the spur-of-the-moment, but I'm VERY happy with it! (it's essentially silent, too - I hate fan noises).

Anyway, I re-ran the tests:
- deleted all .pf files (not sure if this matters), enabled Superfetch service, registry entries set to 3.
- rebooted TEN times, started one small program, FreeExplorer, each time to reboot via the Restart-Time.vbs script. Reboot time measured w/script went from 52 sec to 50 sec. over the ten reboots. (about 10 sec longer than it was before).
- Turned off Superfetch service. Registry entries still 3.
- Rebooted several times - 40 sec each time w/Superfetch turned off.

?? I would think it's not loading any programs other than FreeExplorer, into memory after ten reboots ... ???

 

[whs]

If you really want to know, you can run Soluto. It will tell you all the processes that get started at boot (probably 50 to 60) and how long each one takes. You can also manipulate the startup processes from there.

 

[carwiz]

You can view boot and shutdown times in the Event Logs. Click the Orb, type Event then click on Event Viewer.

Expand: Applications and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Diagnostics-Performance > Operational

Times are shown in milliseconds and grouped by Windows' boot phases. You can see what phase(s) is/are causing a delay.

Event-ID 100 = Boot
Event-ID 200 = Shutdown

 

[Corazon]

See, you're still going about it the wrong way. You can reboot a million times with Superfetch enabled and not see much of a difference if you're not really using the system between reboots.

Just letting it sit a few minutes and/or launching one, maybe two apps isn't going to cut it. It's that simple. In the first place, it really is a bit obsessive to worry about a 2-second difference in boot time...but once you're using your system an hour, two hours, maybe all day, I guarantee you Superfetch will make a difference.

My laptop is even lower-end than yours and doesn't even have 3GB available to Windows...and without Superfetch it just makes me want to shoot myself. But with it, everything is great.

 

[MilesAhead]

In Vista I saw benefit to only caching boot files. But after a long time running Windows 7 the same way I tried making a small page file and setting the registry settings to the default pair of '3's. Programs I use frequently are favored slightly. Programs I seldom use I notice a slight lag. It does make a difference.

Try setting Superfetch service to Automatic Delayed Start. That got rid of the tiny lag I noticed when booting. Not so much the boot was slow but the drive was kind of busy as Superfetch wants to start gathering stats a bit too soon. At least on my setup it's smoother with delayed start.