Yesterday I explained about both Prefetch and Superfetch. Both Windows Vista and Windows 7 contains Superfetch since it is more advanced and uses more complex algorithm.
Windows 7 Superfetch is in fact better than Vista’s, it doesn’t start caching instantly the moment you log in. It would wait a few minutes and then start loading the your system’s memory with the applications you use most often. In order to increase the performance of Windows 7, the priority of superfetch has been slightly reduced.
We do not recommend disabling SuperFetch in Windows 7, but if you are a gamer who needs slightly more memory or just an advanced user who doesn’t need SuperFetch, then you can disable it.
The process is very straightforward, load the Services window by typing services.msc in Start Search. Once open, locate the SuperFetch key.
Now double-click the SuperFetch key and it will open the Properties dialog window. Here you can Disable it by changing the dropdown to Disabled. There is another interesting option called Automatic(Delayed Start), this will start superfetching after quite some time during startup. To stop superfetching immediately, hit the Stop button.
Like I said above, this is not recommended but it might be helpful to someone looking to disable it.
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Disabling superfetch is a sure way to 1) slow down the Windows 7 startup time and 2) slow down the overall Windows 7 experience.
I have 8GB of DDR2 installed w/ Windows 7 Pro x64 and I leave memory management and such to Windows 7. It does a fine job on it’s own.
Sorry to I have to disagree. My new HP Desktop took over seven minutes to load. After I added more RAM, bringing it to eight gigs it took so long to load I thought the Ram was faulty, at last it loaded. I began some research that pointed out that Superfetch was the likely culprit. I disabled it and bam, my computer booted in less than two minutes. This also cured the horrible lag that Superfetch caused in my 3 Games.
I am sorry but it it is taking your system 8 mins with a SSD to load you have a big problem, and should look into fixing it. And even it going down to 3 mins to boot is to long. Even with my old non SSD hardrive my computer would boot way faster than your 3 mins 1 – 1 1/2 at the most if that. And now with a SSD i get what 22-32 sec boot to windows 7 before I can start using it and everything is loaded..
I think you should clean out the junk in your HP Desktop and clean out all the junk that comes with it…
Sorry to I have to disagree. My new HP Desktop took over seven minutes to load. After I added more RAM, bringing it to eight gigs it took so long to load I thought the Ram was faulty, at last it loaded. I began some research that pointed out that Superfetch was the likely culprit. I disabled it and bam, my computer booted in less than two minutes. This also cured the horrible lag that Superfetch caused in my 3 Games.
Sorry to I have to disagree. My new HP Desktop took over seven minutes to load. After I added more RAM, bringing it to eight gigs it took so long to load I thought the Ram was faulty, at last it loaded. I began some research that pointed out that Superfetch was the likely culprit. I disabled it and bam, my computer booted in less than two minutes. This also cured the horrible lag that Superfetch caused in my 3 Games.
So how was superfetch actually causing lag in your games? It only does its work (loading stuff into ram) while the computer is idle, and of course if something needs more memory the cache would get dumped as you go.
Very simple the most 3D games load up expecting the reported RAM to be available at a moments notice. Windows reports it as free and ready. Most the time the game will load and take for example 1 gig, but as you play the game and go to more and more places and add more things, build, buy etc. The game require more RAM.
However in the meantime Superfetch decides that since the game loaded up with only the one gig, it then proceeds to load up the “extra as it sees it” with other things that you have used recently and might use again. When the game then reaches for more RAM it is not there. There is considerably lag while you wait for Superfetch to free up the RAM it commandeered. Even if it attempts to cache parts of the game itself, it really has no way of effectively knowing what will be used again. It might cache something that if fact you only needed to access once.
It is very clear that Superfetch was designed with applications such as Office in mind. Applications that are pretty static in what they do, not dynamic apps such as 3D games that are accessing and demanding resources on an ongoing basis.
Superfetch looks for junk to put into RAM. When I had it on, my computer would take literly 7 minutes to load, when I disabled it the computer booted in less than one minute. I will add that this was with Vista. I have not checked the setting since installing Win 7 so I do not know if Superfetch had been fixed or gotten rid of altogether.
you could always make a shortcut to this
create a new shortcut call it net stop superfetch
on the next step you should end up with net.exe
press space at the end off that then put net stop superfetch
if it doesent work open up the shortcut and make shure the target say's
C:WindowsSystem32net.exe start superfetch
you could always make another one called net start and replace the stop with start
you will have to run these by right clicking on the shortcut and run as administrator
Thanks for the info, I’m going to try disabling Superfetch to see if it makes much of a difference in terms of performance. I just find it kind of frustrating hearing my hard drive swap back and forth while it is idle.
I disabled SuperFetch, but I don’t see any diference. The Windows startup time and the performance are the same.
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