Prefetcher not working...

[Guest]

Hi,

Awhile back I decided to disable Prefetcher in the registry (change
EnablePrefetcher to "0") and then went ahead and deleted the Windows/Prefetch
folder. I know this is not ideal, and looking back I kinda wish I hadn't.
Now, I wouldn't mind trying Prefetcher again to see whether it helps with
things, and I cannot get Windows to start using the Prefetch folder again. I
enabled Prefetcher in the registry to 3 (both boot and application), and
rebooted, and even tried creating a Prefetch folder, but Windows won't start
"using" it. I didn't really think that deleting that folder would mean I
could never use it again, and I also figured I would not want to use it again
anyway.

Is there any way to restore the Prefetch in XP save from doing a clean
install or repair install? It'd be nice to have the option to do Prefetch if
I liked it, but it's hard to understand why changing the registry doesn't
seem to have any effect on the system...

Thanks for the input,
Andrew

 

[Guest]

Nevermind. I remember that you need TaskScheduler enabled for Prefetcher to
work (and it was disabled because I don't use it). So once I enabled T.S., XP
created a Prefetch folder and all is well.

Woohoo!

 

[S.Sengupta]

Great.

regards,
S.Sengupta[MS-MVP]

Nevermind. I remember that you need TaskScheduler enabled for Prefetcher to
work (and it was disabled because I don't use it). So once I enabled T.S., XP
created a Prefetch folder and all is well.

Woohoo!


:

 

[frodo]

Nevermind. I remember that you need TaskScheduler enabled for Prefetcher to
work (and it was disabled because I don't use it). So once I enabled T.S., XP
created a Prefetch folder and all is well.

great. here's a tip: to force the prefetcher to update the layout.ini
file (used by the defrager), and to run the quick boot-optimize defrag (if
the reg key is set to run it, which it is by default) type this command:

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

after running this you should see that all the .pf files have been
"flushed" to the \prefetch folder, old ones have been removed, and
layout.ini has been updated. If the defrag -b ran then your boot-up and
app-launch times should be better. this "idle tasks" function normally
kicks in by itself when the system goes idle (ie, the screen saver
activates and runs for about 2 mins). it does other things too, unrelated
to prefectch, if they have been hooked into the idle-process-tasks queue.

the reg setting for the defrag -b can be controlled by tweakui, General
section, "defrag hd when idle" checkbox. if unchecked you will need to
run it manually w/ "defrag c: -b" (or whatever your \windows drive is).
typically this is unchecked ONLY if you run a 3rd party defrager that
handles the boot-optimize function on its own, like PerfectDisk does. In
that case you SHOULD run the processidletasks cmd above to force an update
to layout.ini before running PerfectDisk, so it has the latest info for PD
to work with.

enjoy!