No active prefetch folder

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Woods
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Bill Woods

From another thread I went to look for my prefetch files. I found I
had no prefetch files. Where could they be?

In C:\WINDOWS\PREFETCH there is only one file in the whole folder and
it is called layout.ini. There are no other files there. The
layout.ini is quite big at 630 KB and it contains 11,500 entry lines
each of which refers some file or another.

I remember that a few months ago I had a strange subfolder in
C:\Program Files. It was full of files with a .pf extension so I
deleted it. I forget the subfolder's name now.

I can't search for .pf file wih Win Explorer as it ignores them. So
I searched for .pf files with two different file searching utilities.
They found only four .pf files and all those were in a Dreamweaver
subfolder.

Where in the registry does XP name the prefetch folder & path?

After Googling around, I checked this registry key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\
Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
and EnablePrefetcher is a REG_DWORD and is set to 3.

How can I get the prefetcher working on my system?
 
Prefetching requires the use of Task Scheduler - is it running
on your system ? I would check it's log to see if it contains any
error messages. Control Panel (Classic View), Scheduled Tasks
Advanced, View Log. Scroll to the bottom of the file and look
for recent entries.
 
As has been mentioned, Task Scheduler needs to be set @ Automatic.

Start | Run | Type: services.msc | OK |
Scroll down to and double click Task Scheduler | Startup type: Automatic |
Apply | OK | Close Services.

Start | Run | Type: regedit |OK
Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory
Management\PrefetchParameters
Look for EnablePrefetcher in the right pane, if the value is not 3,
Double click EnablePrefetcher and change the value to 3.
Values are (0 = disabled, 1 = Application launch prefetching, 2 = Boot
prefetching, 3 = Both prefetching). 3 seems to be the preferred option.
Exit regedit
This will take effect on next reboot.
It will take three boots to rebuild the Prefetch file.
-----

If for some reason layout.ini {C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\layout.ini} does not get
recreated after three boots, try this:
Start | Run | Type: cmd | OK
Paste:

rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

Hit Enter

At this point, the layout.ini should be rebuilt.

You can force a boot optimization by doing the following:
Start | Run | Type: cmd | OK |
Typeor paste:

defrag c: -boot

Hit Enter

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
On Wed 09 Mar 2005 14:58:33, R. McCarty wrote:
Prefetching requires the use of Task Scheduler - is it running
on your system ? I would check it's log to see if it contains any
error messages. Control Panel (Classic View), Scheduled Tasks
Advanced, View Log. Scroll to the bottom of the file and look
for recent entries.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. All ok now.
 
Thanks again for the detailed info Wesley. I asked this after you
mentioned an aside about prefetch in another thread you were helpping
me in. Your help is much appreciated. Thank you.


On Thu 10 Mar 2005 13:58:33, Wesley Vogel wrote:
 
Bill, keep having fun! :-)

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
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