Norton Ghost 9.0

[RJK]

Earlier I installed Norton Ghost 9.0 - which informed me that I would have
to download and install yet another humungous heap of crap from Microsoft
called .net something or other - which I did.

Now boot-up takes longer and I get a log-on screen that I don't want, and
after yet again working out that a left-click is really a right-click until
my main administrator profile has loaded, and I notice that in "user
accounts" there's a new one called ASP .NET A...'s Account. Also the
desktop icons take ages to turn from little white pages into icons !!

Any ideas muchly appreciated. (In W98se one used to be able delete an
iconcache somewhere - to force it to rebuild etc. ....can u do the same in
XP ?

regards, Richard

 

[Andre Da Costa]

Enter Control Panel > User Accounts > Change the way users log, select
Welcome Screen > Apply Options.

Clean out your pre-fetch folder:
a.. Open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete those junk and obsolete
files, reboot. It is recommended that you do this every month

Andre

 

[R. McCarty]

Andre,

Cleaning out the Prefetch folder is not a maintenance procedure.
It does nothing to alleviate any issues with running XP. Please do
advance this "Urban Legend" regarding PC upkeep. Repeating
this advice on unrelated problems isn't helpful.

 

[RJK]

Hello Andre, thanx 4 your reply, there's 3.94mb's worth in the prefetch
folder, including a 475kb layout.ini - I didn't even know there was a
prefetch folder - I don't think I like the idea of a prefetch folder very
much !

....turned off Welcome screen thanx for that. I went in there earler and
had a quick look - didn't sopt it - must be tired
thanx again,

regards, Richard

 

[Gerry]

Hi,
I just checked my Windows/Prefetch folder and I have 150 files taking over 5
MB space. What happens to those files, if they don't get manually deleted?
Thanks for your reply,
Gerry

 

[R. McCarty]

OK, Prefetch is an internal performance enhancer for Windows XP.
Whenever an application runs, Prefetcher creates a .PF file containing
data about the application and it's location on the disk. Every 3-days
Prefetch takes the .PF files and modifies a table Layout.ini. This file is
in turn used by Defrag to place files on the drive to expedite their time
to load.
Not only does it do this for applications, but also drivers used in the
boot process. XP can do Parallel driver loading, not sequential. So if
the disk layout places drivers together boot time is reduced.
Prefetch has operating modes. Boot Only, Applications Only or both
Boot and Application.
The folder is self-maintaining. Items roll-off the list, if not used.
You can purge it out and no damage is done, but it will take several
days to re-capture .PF data, update the Layout.Ini and then for the
"idle" time defrag to redo the partial defrag on the drive. There aren't
any advantages to cleaning it out.

In other words if you purge it out - It will start over and if that's what
you want to do it won't harm anything.

 

[Gerry]

Thank you very much for enlightening me.
Gerry

OK, Prefetch is an internal performance enhancer for Windows XP.
Whenever an application runs, Prefetcher creates a .PF file containing
data about the application and it's location on the disk. Every 3-days
Prefetch takes the .PF files and modifies a table Layout.ini. This file is
in turn used by Defrag to place files on the drive to expedite their time
to load.
Not only does it do this for applications, but also drivers used in the
boot process. XP can do Parallel driver loading, not sequential. So if
the disk layout places drivers together boot time is reduced.
Prefetch has operating modes. Boot Only, Applications Only or both
Boot and Application.
The folder is self-maintaining. Items roll-off the list, if not used.
You can purge it out and no damage is done, but it will take several
days to re-capture .PF data, update the Layout.Ini and then for the
"idle" time defrag to redo the partial defrag on the drive. There aren't
any advantages to cleaning it out.

In other words if you purge it out - It will start over and if that's what
you want to do it won't harm anything.