2.5 Mins of Prefetching at Startup

[LoneStar]

Does anyone notice that after statup is complete, you get a 2 and a half
minute of Prefetching going on. There is a 2 and a half minute of constant
hard disk activity during this time and from the Reliability and
Performance
Monitor, it shows hundreds of:

svchost.exe (LocalSystemNetworkRestricted)
svchost.exe (secsvcs)

The top one is related to Superfetch.
The second one is related to Windows Defender.

Does anyone else get this?
I did outline something similar on another topic but I now have a clearer
topic.

I have a Dell Vista Home Premium, and I get the same startup prefetching.
No worries: I just let it go for 4 minutes or so, then start my work/play.

Your message regarding the Events Viewer: I check this all the time and am
amazed at some of the "warnings" and "errors" I get. Every day at bootup I
get a tcpip error and a dhcp error (or warning). I get several "hash" crap
violations here and there (whatever that means) and loads of others. Upon
shutdown, I get User Profile errors (which show up on the next boot). ALL
THE WHILE, my Vista runs perfectly, and I run EVERYTHING on it just to make
sure. Note: occasionally, my Control Panel and some other stuff won't open
without rebooting, but I've already run that subject on this newsgroup
enough (and got no answer).

All in all, I don't mind the prefetching -- everything I normally use opens
up in a second!

EW

PS: Of more worry to me (and a throng of others) is WTF is the problem with
Vista file sharing!!!!!

 

[Guest]

Thanks for that reply.
Yes, my Vista is also Dell - not sure if the Prefetching is to do with Dell,
not sure why it could be, but you know Dell, they fill the system with sh**
all the time.

I don't get errors popping up or anything - just noticed those small
warning/errors on that Event Viewer. I haven't noticed any problems with
anything. It seems to be on that one day so it could be related to something
else and wont occur again, no errors on that since that date (23rd).

I just find that Prefetching annoying and that constant hard disk usage.

Do you also notice the hard disk light flashing every 2-4 secs, sometimes
every second?

 

[Rock]

Thanks for that reply.
Yes, my Vista is also Dell - not sure if the Prefetching is to do with
Dell,
not sure why it could be, but you know Dell, they fill the system with
sh**
all the time.

Prefetching at startup is due to Vista, it has nothing to do with any 3rd
party software that Dell has installed.

I don't get errors popping up or anything - just noticed those small
warning/errors on that Event Viewer. I haven't noticed any problems with
anything. It seems to be on that one day so it could be related to
something
else and wont occur again, no errors on that since that date (23rd).

I just find that Prefetching annoying and that constant hard disk usage.

Do you also notice the hard disk light flashing every 2-4 secs, sometimes
every second?

Leave the system on overnight Then it will do all the maintenance and
obviously you don't have to deal as often with the heavy prefetch activity
at start up, though the system constantly reassesses what is being done as
you work and adjusts what is loaded in RAM for caching.

I rarely turn the system off. A system reliability report shows the system
drive idle time is above 80%.

 

[Guest]

What do you mean the system drive idle time is 80%..
Shouldn't system CPU be at below 10% when idle.. more like between 2-10%?
Maybe I miss understand what you meant?

I could leave it on one night but system doesn't seem to do anything when
it's on - only during startup. I find it strange that some people get
something similar but some don't when my Supefetch settings haven't been
changed to my knowledge.

 

[Rock]

What do you mean the system drive idle time is 80%..
Shouldn't system CPU be at below 10% when idle.. more like between 2-10%?
Maybe I miss understand what you meant?

I could leave it on one night but system doesn't seem to do anything when
it's on - only during startup. I find it strange that some people get
something similar but some don't when my Supefetch settings haven't been
changed to my knowledge.

It means the drive, not the CPU, that contains the volume on which the OS
is installed is idle over 80% of the time - i.e. no disk access - the drive
isn't doing anything.

Yes prefetch runs when the computer is restarted and periodically during
use. I haven't seen anyone post that they don't see the same behavior. You
are beating a dead horse here, and I don't understand why. Prefetch runs
heavily when the computer is first started to populate RAM.

 

[Guest]

How do I find a report to see when my hard disk is idle like yours is 80% of
time.
My hard disk light flashes every 2-4 seconds, sometimes every second - even
when idle. It somtimes flashes after a slighly longer period if it is idle
properly with no programs.

 

[Rock]

How do I find a report to see when my hard disk is idle like yours is 80%
of
time.
My hard disk light flashes every 2-4 seconds, sometimes every second -
even
when idle. It somtimes flashes after a slighly longer period if it is idle
properly with no programs.

Right click Computer | Properties | Performance (bottom of left pane) |
Advanced Tools | Generate a system health report (last entry). It will take
a minute to run. The data on the drivers is one of the last categories.

 

[Rock]

How do I find a report to see when my hard disk is idle like yours is 80%
of
time.
My hard disk light flashes every 2-4 seconds, sometimes every second -
even
when idle. It somtimes flashes after a slighly longer period if it is idle
properly with no programs.

Additional once a report is generated you can later review the contents of
the last report at a later time from Reliability and Performance Monitor |
Reports | System | System Diagnostics.

 

[Guest]

Visit the link below for screen shot - I see no percentage of idleness
anywhere :S
http://www.tezmania.com/mypc/log.jpg

 

[Guest]

Where do you find percentage: http://www.tezmania.com/mypc/log.jpg nothing
there.

 

[LoneStar]

Do you also notice the hard disk light flashing every 2-4 secs, sometimes
every second?

Quick reply: yes, my Dell XPS 410's hard drive LED flashes every second, or
so. I don't have a clue why, but it does, and all's well. Note: I have
indexing disabled, hardly any scheduled tasks running, etc. Who knows!

EW

 

[Rock]

Visit the link below for screen shot - I see no percentage of idleness
anywhere :S
http://www.tezmania.com/mypc/log.jpg

How about looking through all the sections They are quite a few and are
expandable. Maybe even look under the "Disk" category?

 

[Guest]

Here:
http://tezmania.com/mypc/rb.jpg
Not sure the exact one it is - which one does it say 80% on yours not
whatever it is on mine.

 

[Rock]

Here:
http://tezmania.com/mypc/rb.jpg
Not sure the exact one it is - which one does it say 80% on yours not
whatever it is on mine.

I think yours has 96% under Physical Disk Percent Idle Time.

 

[Guest]

I think yours has 96% under Physical Disk Percent Idle Time.

Is that bad? What does it mean?
How do I lower it if it helps?

 

[Rock]

Is that bad? What does it mean?
How do I lower it if it helps?

That's good. High percent idle.

 

[Mike Brannigan]

Thanks for that reply.
Yes, my Vista is also Dell - not sure if the Prefetching is to do with
Dell,
not sure why it could be, but you know Dell, they fill the system with
sh**
all the time.

I don't get errors popping up or anything - just noticed those small
warning/errors on that Event Viewer. I haven't noticed any problems with
anything. It seems to be on that one day so it could be related to
something
else and wont occur again, no errors on that since that date (23rd).

I just find that Prefetching annoying and that constant hard disk usage.

Do you also notice the hard disk light flashing every 2-4 secs, sometimes
every second?

Just to clarify a couple of points and the terminology being used.
The major disk activity you see after a boot is not prefetchoing but to be
more accurate is ReadyBoot running and calculating the prefetch paths to
seed up to the boot process. This is done after every successful boot to
calculate the new boot-time cache plan.
This is then written out to disk.
Once that is done you are then in the hand of SuperFetch which monitors your
application and data load activity constantly. This allows it to watch what
you do and also when you do it, so it can build a load plan that will pre
fetch from disk the majority of an application that you always run at a
certain time of day etc.
This means that there is data almost always being written to the SuperFetch
scenario data files on disk hence more disk activity and then read from disk
to the SuperFetch memory cache.

 

[Guest]

Just to clarify a couple of points and the terminology being used.
The major disk activity you see after a boot is not prefetchoing but to be
more accurate is ReadyBoot running and calculating the prefetch paths to
seed up to the boot process. This is done after every successful boot to
calculate the new boot-time cache plan.
This is then written out to disk.
Once that is done you are then in the hand of SuperFetch which monitors your
application and data load activity constantly. This allows it to watch what
you do and also when you do it, so it can build a load plan that will pre
fetch from disk the majority of an application that you always run at a
certain time of day etc.
This means that there is data almost always being written to the SuperFetch
scenario data files on disk hence more disk activity and then read from disk
to the SuperFetch memory cache.

So, would you say the disk flashing every 1-5 secs normally when idle etc is
normal?

 

[Mike Brannigan]

So, would you say the disk flashing every 1-5 secs normally when idle etc
is
normal?

Yes.
Just staring at 2 laptops and 3 PCs at the moment and all have 1 to 5 second
minute disk IO flashes.
These system have a variety of products installed that will use idle time
such as Diskeeper, the indexer, and of course the SuperFetch, ReadyBoot and
for the ones with USB memory sticks inserted or hybrid hard disks,
ReadyBoast and ReadyDisk.
So personally as none of these have a negative impact on performance if I
actually do some work I would say your HD flashes are perfectly normal.

 

[Guest]

Yes.
Just staring at 2 laptops and 3 PCs at the moment and all have 1 to 5 second
minute disk IO flashes.
These system have a variety of products installed that will use idle time
such as Diskeeper, the indexer, and of course the SuperFetch, ReadyBoot and
for the ones with USB memory sticks inserted or hybrid hard disks,
ReadyBoast and ReadyDisk.
So personally as none of these have a negative impact on performance if I
actually do some work I would say your HD flashes are perfectly normal.

I have indexing on drive C unticked and don't have many products that would
use a lot of background stuff. I have AVG, MSN running currently. Defender is
also but the interface is not loaded at startup, just the service so it does
stuff at startup. I have no USB stick in either. It on average flashes every
2-3 secs.