Myth Busted: Why Disabling SuperFetch on Vista and Windows 7 Is a Bad Idea
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March 3rd, 2010 written by Tibor in Myth buster
Let’s start this one off with a little, practical exercise. Are you with us? Good! Right-click on your taskbar, and select “Task Manager”. Now, take a good look at the numbers you see under the “Performance” tab. Let them sink in a bit.
This is unbelievable!
On a machine with 2 GBytes of RAM, how can there be 2 MBytes free? What’s behind all of this?
Even if you have twice as much memory, you will probably only have a couple of hundred MBytes available. This comes as an absolute shock to every computer user. While you’re only running a browser or listening to music, Windows Vista or Windows 7 consumes nearly all of your precious RAM. This fact led even Computerworld to pick up a Devil Mountain Software research study, claiming that Windows 7 maxes out memory and thus slows down the computer. To quote the research:
“On average, 86 percent of Windows 7 machines in the XPNet pool are regularly consuming 90 percent to 95 percent of their available RAM, resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks.”
Have you ever heard of SuperFetch?
The truth is—this is by design! Back in 2007, Microsoft introduced Windows Vista and one of its new features, SuperFetch, which is responsible for taking up as much of your computer’s memory as possible—albeit for a good cause!
- SuperFetch predicts which applications you will run next and preloads all of the necessary data into memory. It also does that with boot files. This helps prevent accessing the slower hard disk too often. The result? Programs launch much quicker, and Windows boots faster.
- SuperFetch’s prediction algorithm is able to determine which application users will open by a certain time of day and by a certain day of week. It is able to predict up to the next three applications that the user will launch.
- SuperFetch is smart—it prioritizes the programs you currently run over the background tasks, such as defragmentation. These tasks run when the computer is idle, but when they are complete, Windows SuperFetch populates the memory again.
- SuperFetch is dynamic—it adapts to your needs all of the time. So, if your favorite programs change over time, SuperFetch is able to quickly adapt to this.
Windows SuperFetch populates the computer’s memory with this preloaded information, to speed up programs and Windows features. So, what’s the benefit for you? Your favorite programs—for example, your Web browser, your media player and your e-mail application—are likely to start faster after a couple of days. Don’t worry, even if you install a new application, SuperFetch will not have a negative impact on performance. As soon as the new application demands memory, the SuperFetch data gets flushed. As far as this program is concerned, the memory is empty.
If you’re familiar with the Windows kernel, we recommend this interesting video from MSDN’s Channel 9. Michael Fortin from the Windows Performance Team talks about what Microsoft had in mind when developing SuperFetch and similar performance technologies. A little side note: Michael also talks about how a computer becomes slower over time due to the installation of a lot of programs (this is at about 20 minutes into the video). The TuneUp Blog team recently proved this theory in our post titled “How 200 Programs Slow Down Your PC“.
What happens when you disable SuperFetch?
Readers should know us by now. We don’t just talk theories; we test them intensely. So, we decided to disable Windows SuperFetch on one of our test machines and compare the performance of both machines. First of all, as expected, the Task Manager tells us that we now have about 600 MBytes of memory free.
This is bad! An important part of your computer is not being fully used. This is like having a 200hp engine in your car, with only 140hp being used. What impact did disabling SuperFetch have on our system? Boot performance went down immensely. Usually, this process took about one and a half minutes on our test bed; with SuperFetch disabled, boot time went up to exactly two and a half minutes.
We also compared the startup performance of a couple of applications, including Outlook 2010 Beta, which needed five seconds longer to start and navigating between folders felt sluggish. Launching even the very slim Google Chrome browser took about seven seconds, whereas the original test only took four seconds. This is not good.
Myth busted!
We can go on and on, but you get the point. Although we have more memory, performance actually noticeably decreased. SuperFetch in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is a good technology that helps speed up your entire system—and should not be disabled.
136 Responses to “Myth Busted: Why Disabling SuperFetch on Vista and Windows 7 Is a Bad Idea”
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March 5, 2010 at 12:02 am
Nice post that put all the facts together. Thanks for the sharing.
Cheers, Kent
March 11, 2010 at 10:08 am
Good Job
Keep up your panachè, Tune Up
March 11, 2010 at 6:41 pm
ok since its not a good idea to disable Superfetch as you have pointed out. what about Solid State Drive? i hear its a bad thing to have on. should i disable it or leave it on.
March 12, 2010 at 11:21 am
Hi Bill, actually Windows 7 automatically disables SuperFetch for MOST systems with SSDs. Win7 checks the performance of the hard disk and – if random writes and flushes are being performed fast enough – disables SuperFetch and other prefetching features. However, if you have a SSD that doesn’t meet the speed requirements (which is very rare) Windows 7 leaves it on for a performance boost.
So I urge you to let the Windows 7 operating system decide and not enable or disable SuperFetch manually!
March 12, 2010 at 3:54 pm
ok, windows turns off superfetch,prefetch,defrag ect.
i have a Intel X25m 80GB G2 btw..
thanks.
March 12, 2010 at 4:44 pm
My pleasure!
April 10, 2010 at 10:03 am
Windows 7 was eating up my memory, I turned off the superfetch option and actually had no effect that I can see except now I have 95 percent of my system memory free instead of 80 percent. Start up speed is also the same.
April 11, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Let me tell you my experience. I am an avid coder. I program and do multimedia too. And by multimedia I mean Extensive Photoshop CS4 and Autodesk Combustion and hours of Matlab ( Extremely Complex Mathematics Computing Software ) computing. Disabling Prefecth took Matlab to start full 16 seconds late ( It normally took 5 seconds, and after Prefetch disabling it took ~22 seconds ) ! !
I think Prefetch really helps, as stated in the post. I can do without that VAGUE SATISFACTION of 88% free memory
But hey, thanks Tune Up, for busting the myth with a very practical test.
” Thumbs Up “
April 10, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Did you check startup times of your programs (mail app, browser etc.) ? With Superfetch being turned off, you should notice that it takes much slower. What kind of a system do you have?
Best, Sandro
TuneUp Blog
April 12, 2010 at 8:54 am
I have just disabled super fetch and could not be happier finally the annoying clatter of the disk going on and on is finally gone as far as boot time have not noticed much difference in fact it may have speeded up the boot time if you consider the slow process of super fetch loading up your ram as part of the boot sequence. But than again I don’t have many Items in my start up. as for the analogy of having a 200 hp engine in a car and only using 140 hp ,I see your type driving through parking lots all the time and one of you is going to kill someone someday . That power is there for hills heavy loads and reserve.
For those of you who disagree allow me to come over and super fetch your kitchen every time you put something away after using it I will pull it back out and clutter up your counter tops just so the items are ready for next time you use them if you need the space you can move them out of the way and after you are finished with that space I will place them back on the counter now wouldn’t that be efficient?
April 12, 2010 at 11:36 am
Alas, nothing could have been better compared Superfecth=Kitchen
On a serious ( pun intended ! ) note try comparing it with errr….. SUPERFETCH ?
What I mean is :
1.) Core i7 = Gas Oven
2.) Ram = Kitchen Sink
3.) Hard Drive = Fridge ( The larger the better )
4.) Cabinet = Kitchen Room
5.) Fan = Exhaust fan ya Chimney
6.) Blue Ray Drive = Microwave Oven Turntable
Hey, you must do benchmarks and tests, and thats EXACTLY what Tune Up did. And if your PC Use= watching videos and surfing net, Superfetch is an Overkill.
April 12, 2010 at 2:35 pm
I should also mention Larry that you PRACTICALLY LACK ANY & EVERY KNOWLEDGE about Superfetch. It would really be helpful to find the stuff I need to cook dinner everyday before I cook. Superfetch “fetches” intelligently my monitoring your pc usage. Say, I run Matlab every day at 11 A.M. Superfetch definately knows it by studying my habits and makes the files ready before 11 A.M. This make complex application start-up snazzy and fast.
Last but not the least, 1 Microsoft Way isn’t a Huge Kitchen of Cooks, but and ideal mixture of talented beings.
April 12, 2010 at 12:50 pm
P.S Forgot it
7.) Data = Chicken, Vegetables, Salt etc
April 12, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Benchmarks are great but I do not judge my computer performance by how quickly it boots or by the fact that a program loads in 2 seconds as compared to 4 . I am happy with the fact that five minutes after boot up my hard drive is silent. and I have control over when I load the programs I want and not Vista .
April 12, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Practically its IMPOSSIBLE to hear your hard drive sound unless you stick your ear to it ( ouch~hot
), so I am assuming you are talking about you cpu fan and heatsink efficiancy. So it takes 5 minutes. Guess what? Mines takes ~5 seconds after boot up and with air condition on, it happens instantaeneously. And my hard drive setup is 4x1TB in RAID 0, with also one NAS drive connected, with 687.4 GB used out of 4 TB. So, thats quite fast.
Benchmarks should be made strictly formal, however personal satisfaction is a different thing altogether.
Take my tip, enable Superfetch. It really works.
P.S. Get the latest Tune Up 2010, I guarantee your performance will increase manifold.
April 12, 2010 at 9:37 pm
So what your saying is I had super fetch running and has loaded a certain application into my ram that was a regularly used high memory usage application . Then I started another High memory use program that I only use once a year and it moves the preloaded program out of ram to make room for the program that I have just started than shut that program down and instantly click on the application that was loaded and moved out That application will now load faster than if I was not running super fetch even thou super fetch has not had a chance to move it back into ram yet?
April 12, 2010 at 9:50 pm
What I am saying is that Superfetch monitor your behaviour. Why not follow the link provided by Tune Up and get your idea clear?
If you start a program which you use once a year e.g. Taxation Software, instead of buying it rent it.
On a more relevant note, Superfetch would monitor your behaviour for many days, then alone your program will be listed. I know its really hard to understand how an application starts and its liabalities and dependencies, which is of course out of this post’s scope.
But to make your complex misdirection vanquish, I would put forward that read the post by Tune Up thoroughly, follow the link provided there in and read it. Google or search Wikipedia for Superfetch. Actually I am not saying anything, its what Microsoft is saying, which, I daresay, is fully correct. Even after that you have any question you can freely ask me here
P.S. I would request any of the Tune Up experts to please let us know how much time does Superfetch actually take to catch my habit. It would be really helpful for both Larry and me.
Thanks.
April 12, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Typed in a hurry, so please excuse the typos.
April 13, 2010 at 3:35 am
I do have hard drive trashing in Vista which starts during boot up I have the hard drive reading for about 5 minutes after boot up and it has been known to do the same thing while i am using Xplane9 and other applications causing computer to become slow and Glitchy In Task manager resource monitor I can see the hard drive constantly reading from the drive it shows up as svchost access restricted over and over again . This all goes away with Super fetch being Disabled.
April 13, 2010 at 5:29 am
That may be an exceptional case. As I said, personal satisfaction marrs all benchmarks. What I think is that the application’s memory handlers are not nativly made for Vista. Hey thanks for letting us all know about this problem. I am also waiting for the replies of Tune Up Experts.
P.S. Try the latest offering from Microsoft, the Windows 7. It may fix your problem.
Thanks.
April 13, 2010 at 6:28 am
Hello Tibor,
Waiting for your valuable inputs, that may clear our idea about the amount of time required/algorithm followed by the latest Windows 7, to judge our behaviour and activate or better said compute Superfetch.
Also I have a 10,000 RPM Western Digital Velociraptor. Will Superfetch be activated there? Its much faster then some of the SSDs. What about those 15,000 RPM SAS drives? These days many x58 mobos support them.
Waiting for your valuable input.
April 13, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Great discussion going on here. Love it
Jeet, your are absolutely right about how Superfetch works – I have nothing to add to that. So let’s answer your question: There is no pre-determined timeframe in which Windows Superfetch actually adapts to your typical PC behavior. It starts off with a basic set of information, a sort of default cache. But then it dynamically changes over time, depending on which applications you start frequently. From our experience that usually happens in two or three days of typical computer usage. As we have lots of test machines that we need to set up, we notice Superfetch adapting very very quickly. And like I said, it is a totally dynamic procedure. So if you’re habits change – say, you start working with a total new set of applications – it adapts usually within a timeframe of only a few days. Or even less, depending on how frequently you launched this application in that timeframe.
And like you said, Superfetch also adapts depending on the time of day: It knows at what time you typically launch an application and optimizes the memory cache accordingly. But it also adapts to the situation, like what you typically do after you resume the PC from Sleep mode or hibernation. It’s a mixture of time and situation.
And yes, Superfetch will be active on your 10.000rpm WD Velociraptor drive. Simple reason: Despite that drive being extremely fast when it comes to transferring huge chunks of files (e.g. loading a game, a video, video conversion etc.), it cannot compete with an SSD when it comes to random read performance of thousands of little data chunks that are only a couple of kilobytes in size. And THAT is usually what is happening in Windows and Superfetch. So having these little data chunks in RAM actually improves performance. As SSDs are much faster when it comes to random reads (or writes) performance features like Superfetch, prefetching, ReadyBoost (etc.) will be disabled, as they wouldn’t have much of an effect.
Personal tip: Get an extremely fast SSD (like the new Intel SSD generation) and use that as a system drive for Windows and applications. Use your Velociraptor only for huge files that you access often!
Larry, I think you simply have a different point of view of optimum performance – and your point is absolutely valid. You prefer your disk to be quiet after you launch Windows. I guess you can achieve that WITHOUT turning Superfetch off and thus slowing down Windows/programs startup time: First of all, get more RAM. From what it sounds like, Windows is constantly paging files in and out of your memory. Try moving to 4 Gigs of RAM, see if that helps. Then turn off all unnecessary startup applications (msconfig will do the trick). And keep in mind: Windows Vista does in fact produce more memory IO than Windows 7. I am not advertising for Microsoft here, but if you really care about fewer disk drive IO, then moving from Vista to 7 will make you happy.
Best, Tibor
April 13, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Thanks, Tibor,
Wow, the reply could’nt have been more complete. Your ideas is just great about SSD Tibor. Thanks a million. Gonna soon adopt it.
Larry I hope both of us now know more about Superfetch, courtsey Tibor.
Thanks again,
Best,
Jeet
April 13, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Actually I have 4 gigs of Mushkin Dual channel ram and in My start up I only have about 5 items . I also have turned off all the visual effects and don’t run Aero . I use CCleaner regularly and defrag regularly with MyDefrag. I fly Xplane9 and use AMD fusion to shut down uneeded services and alacrityPC to shut down Desktop/Vista explorer and to load Xplane in High priority Mode. But still with Superfetch enabled I get the constant reading from the harddrive at bootup and at other times when I it just seems to take over .
April 14, 2010 at 5:04 am
Larry, its a serious problem indeed, as I think so much cut off is not required like turning Aero off etc.
What I personally feel is it is a compatibility issue, or a malware problem. Best, try getting Windows 7. Also, ccleaner is just too basic. Give Tune Up Utilities 2010 a try. Its far more complete and powerful. Also try checking the frequency of Ram. If the two ram sticks are of different clock speeds and frequency, performance is expected to fall. Do reply me of your finding. Use CPUZ to find all this data.
Best, Jeet
April 14, 2010 at 5:47 am
Hey Larry, we are done. I was just checking the X-Plane system requirements page, and saw that the app does not at all require an extreme end configuration. But what we absolutely missed is that its an graphics intensive application. This app relies highly on the graphics processing unit and the video ram. Do consider investing in a 9800GT or any other better option. Take my opinion and go for the HD56xx series of DirectX 11 offerings from Ati. Also do check that the gpu has atleast 1 gig of DDR5/3 Ram, them your app would be a smooth sail.
Do reply with your findings, and give Tune Up 2010 a try.
Hope it helps,
Best, Jeet.
April 14, 2010 at 5:50 am
P.S If you already have 4 Gigs of Ram, its an overkill in the x32 environment. Try to get a good Gpu and switch over to Windows 7 x64. Only then you have your full ram utilised.
April 14, 2010 at 7:51 am
It would be great if Tune Up 2011 would have and automated desktop and mobile gpu overclocking feature. It would be fantastic
!
April 14, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Hey Jeet, wow, thanks again for your incredibly detailed feedback.
And thanks also for your suggestion: Although we’re right now focused on optimizing software, we are also exploring hardware optimization. Hope you understand that we can’t make solid promises. Best, Tibor
April 14, 2010 at 10:26 pm
You are most welcome Tibor. Actually all my high expectation are in virtue of your detailed knowledge.
Have a good day,
Jeet
April 20, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Tibor, (and everyone else) thank you for elucidating on this matter.
I know you already talked about SSD´s, but i have a “little” question. I have a Vertex SSD 60GB, that by default didn´t disable the superfetch or prefetch on win7 x64. On OCZ forums they advise to disable these services, and in fact i “feel” the loss in performance on boot or browser start (for example), and that is the reason that made me look for the benefit of keeping them on. Nevertheless they argue that keeping these services on will increase the “wear” the SSD, since they have limited write/read totals for their lifespan. Also, on other forums, when playing games, they argue that the time of flushing memory and reallocating to 3d games objects is “framerate” consuming at times, since 3d games are by nature, dynamic on usage memory, hence the superfetch “populating memory – flushing memory” sequence being repeated many times and taking those frames per second, sometimes so valuable on games.
I agree that we lose general boot/application performance when disabling superfetch/prefetch, but in theory, these arguments about games or ssd wear, make some sense for me.
Could you please tell me if i´m wright or wrong, and being a person that plays a lot of games, not wanting to change ssd soon, do you think i should keep them on has advised on this blog?
My setup is: i7 920 at 3.5Ghz; GTX275 SLI; OCZ Vertex 60GB;WD 1TB Green; 6Gb triple channel memory; Gigabyte x-58 extreme mobo;
Thank you Tibor! Sorry for not being so “little”, and occasionally for my bad spelling since i´m from Portugal (near Spain)
April 20, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Dear Bandix, that’s exactly why we are here for – and by the way, your spelling is absolutely perfect! About your two questions:
1) I recently conducted several (internal) benchmarks on a machine with a very recent SSD (from last year). The boot-up process and application performance did NOT change when I disabled SuperFetch and Prefetch. If you have a newer-generation SSD (and I think the Vertex qualifies), then SuperFetch and Prefetch should automatically be disabled – and if they’re not, then you should try that out and measure boot performance (maybe with a stop watch or use a benchmark like PC Mark Vantage). About the wear: Modern SSDs have a lot of wear countermeasures for keeping an SSD alive for MANY years. Check out this excellent overview.
2) Flushing out Superfetch cache should be absolutely instantaneous. There shouldn’t be any delay. All memory operations these days are EXTREMELY fast and I don’t think that flushing the RAM would lower performance in any noticeable manner. The bottleneck here is the hard drive: Loading data from a hard drive causes so much performance loss. In fact, the performance loss from waiting on a hard disk (even a fast SSD) to load data into RAM far outweighs any performance loss from flushing out memory.
I also think we should keep a SSD performance benchmark (for gamers) in mind – maybe as a future blog post.
One last advice: Make sure that “Automatic Defragmentation” is turned off. Defragmenting an SSD is not very useful in terms of performance and only might causes additional wear (Read the Engineering 7 post I mentioned earlier for more).
April 23, 2010 at 8:12 am
Hello Tune up, Just re posted this post on my blog with trackback url to here. hope thats permissible !
http://debojyotiblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/myth-busted-why-disabling-superfetch-on.html
April 23, 2010 at 11:36 am
Hi Jeet, so you started your own blog? Thats a great idea.
For refering to contents there are different ways to do that.
1) Write a (short) summary of the original blogpost and refer to its source.
2) Write your own article: Within that you can refer to other sources e.g. by quoting them. Best to mix up different sources.
3) Refer to more information on a special topic, that you do not want to go in deep in your own article, by adding links to other sources. That’s what we normally do.
4) Design a link list to one topic or as a recommendation summary of “what to read”.
5) You should not double contents. Search Engines do not like that. And sometimes sources may not like that either.
6) Be extremely careful with using foreign graphics. From our point of view, you can of course use our graphics to support your article. But there may be other sources, that do not like that.
Have a great day and curious about what we are going to read at your blog. Really like your statement: “A Personal Blog ! Some about life and the rest about computers !”
April 23, 2010 at 8:15 am
Hey Alexandra, Try this: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cumulus/installation/
April 23, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Hello Alexandra,
Thank You Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…….. much for your positive inputs. I in my heading back linked to Tune Up, strictly hoping SEO and intellectual property right support for Tune Up. I will also mention the actual writers name and image copyright information at the end.
Concocting my OWN first blog already,
Thanks again for so many awesome tips,
Best, Jeet
April 23, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Made the blog to redirect for http://www.debojyotidas.in/
April 23, 2010 at 1:46 pm
You’re Welcome
Think, you blog disappeared. If I click the above link, I do not see it anymore. Let’s switch to email, if you have any more questions, cause this is not any more topic related.
April 27, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I gotta say I’m on Larry’s side with this. When the computers idle I want it idle. I’m using Windows 7 Ultimate with 8 Gigs of RAM (And the 10,000 rpm Velociraptor, incidentally). My computers going full-tilt trying to predict what I’m up to (And what’s with an appliance to to figure me out – I like it the other way around, thanks). All this effort to shave a second here and a second there, at the expense of hours and hours of computing, arranging, guessing… figuring, algorithming… come on, give it a rest already computer. Not all of us want to be going ninety in the parking lot.
April 27, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Hi Chris, thanks for your feedback. I’m really curious if Superfetch is really the problem here: Your PC sounds like PRETTY high-end rig…with 8 Gigs of RAM and a Velociraptor. Superfetch shouldn’t keep it that busy. When you take a lookt at Task-Manager, do you see a specific process going nuts (taking up huge amount of CPU cycles/RAM)?
I would also suggest a program like Process Monitor from Sysinternals. http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx. It lists ALL the file system and process activities. So if you’re hard disk is going crazy, try to find out which process is causing this! Tip: You see the four icons on top of Process Monitor? Turn all logging activity EXCEPT “Show file system activity” off – this will make the list a bit more easy to read
Looking forward to your feedback,
Best, Sandro
April 27, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Sandro – been there and tried all that. Process Monitor, I/O Meter, Task Manager…. all to no avail, the process is practically invisible (To the computer and those apps, that is. Not to me though, it’s as obvious and in your face as could be. Thrashing. Ugg).
What makes me confident it’s Superfetch came out of trial and error. I enabled and disabled, one by one and over the course of a week or two, everything I could think of or read about that could cause it – indexing, search, swap files, gadgets, startup nonsense…. none of those affected to computer in the way Superfetch did. With it on, disk thrashing and activity almost non-stop and for hours at a time when it should be idle. With it off, my nervous nelly of a computer is a little more quiet and at ease. At peace, as it were and should be. In either case, no appreciable difference in speed or performance (At least for me).
Don’t get me wrong, if it works for some or doesn’t bother the rest than more power to them. I don’t begrudge that. What I do begrudge are those thinking it’s silly or goofy to want that kind of control over the computer. To me it isn’t (And my buddy Larry). When the computer is idle, I want it idle, especially when the benefits of having it do its thing is a specious as it appears.
That’s all. Not an argument, just a vote of support for Larry and his line of reasoning. Makes perfect sense to me and he’s not alone.
April 30, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Hey Chris, good feedback. No doubt about it. Although I have never heard of this issue with Superfetch, I think you have made a good point – there are always two sides of the coin, right?
Personally I think that in your specific case that Superfetch has encountered a bug or is damaged in a way. So in your case, leaving it off did prove to be better! This should be an interesting read to other users here at the blog!
Best, Sandro
April 30, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Hello Chris,
I am getting interested ! Assuming that you are using all genuine version of softwares and Windows, your problem is worth a look. Can you please do one thing? Download Resource Hacker (Just Google it, you will get the site), and using it take a full ‘log-shot’ (a process by which Resource Hacker fully takes all information about the PC in form of a .txt file. None of your personal information are transferred) and send it to me? Clicking my name should get us in touch. Then we will be really analyzing the matter, and if there is really a bug or a computer virus, trojan or any other form of malware, we can find out ways to get past it or in a buggy case, we will contact Microsoft.
In the meantime I suggest you to download and install Malwarebyte’s Anti Malware. It is an exceptional software to get rid of malware, and is completely free.
P.S. Superfetch might face problem ‘fetching’ x86 application’s dependencies in an x64 environment, but we will check that later.
Best, Debojyoti Das.
May 1, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Thanks Sandro, although regarding the bug or broken Superfetch theory – I’m not sure why you’d think that. It’s doing what it’s supposed to do (Or at least I assume) – when it’s idle it looks around to see what’s on my system*, sorts all that out and then loads/unloads what it thinks I’ll use next, or at least update some kind of index holding all that info.
* I should have mentioned this earlier, but in terms of info there’s a quite a bit of it on my setup. C: is the WD Velociraptor mentioned earlier, running the OS (Win 7 64bit Ultimate, clean install – legit, Debojyot). F: is an active XP drive (Separate, accessed/booted from the Bios – it’s not a dual boot setup, as far as the OS’s know). D: is my data drive – My Docs is redirected there (Not mapped, nor are any others drives) along with backups and music, etc.. Somewhere around 500 Gigs of data on that drive. FYI.
Debojyoti – I hadn’t seen that program before, nice. I’ll give it a shot both with it on and off and get back to you. Give me a day or two.
May 1, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Well, I’m fairly certain that Superfetch got caught in something on your system that’s causing this. You see, loading and unloading superfetch pages should be done instantly. It loads a specific set of pages and doesn’t load/unload 24 hours a day. This is done within seconds.
I’ve just found someone over at the Microsofts Answers who apparently has the same problem as you: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistaperformance/thread/e9ded298-9373-403b-aa3a-2bd2ae456480 Maybe you should also check out the tips and solutions there (e.g. temporarily change Prefetch settings and/or play with the system restore limit.
Best, Sandro
May 1, 2010 at 4:12 pm
To clarify that last part – those are three separate drives, not partitions – Win 7 (Velociraptor), XP (Velociraptor), and the data drive (WD 1TB, Caviar Black?) all SATA and attached via the MB.
I mention that as it’s important in terms of what the computer’s seeing (Less complicated than a dual-boot, again I assume) but also because it gives a clue as to what Superfetch is doing. When the idle but busy thrashing starts, if it’s quiet it means it’s looking at my Velociraptor’s – they hardly make a noise. But other times it will grind and moan, which is my WD drive (I know that from defragging, accessing, etc – I/O meter confirms it as well). So in a way I can tell what it’s up to just from listening – the longer Superfetch is on (I re-enabled after all this discussion above) the more I hear it going to the WD drive. Quite a bit now, in fact.
As far as the computer is concerned, and I’m assuming again, it shouldn’t be interested in the data drive – there’s nothing on it the OS’s need, yet it’s accessing it right and left during the idle busyness. To me more proof to me that it’s Superfetch and that it’s doing it by design – sorting, indexing, etc..
I appreciate the feedback – I expected flak but am getting considerate responses. Thanks.
May 1, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Hmm…you know what, this sounds more like there’s something going on with your Windows Indexing service. May I suggest something? Purge the Windows Indexing cache and disable the service:
Go to Control Panel, type “Indexing” into the Search bar and click on “Indexing options”. Go to “Modify” and hit “Rebuild”. Then disable the Windows Search service under “Control Panel/System and Security/Administrative Tools/Services”. See what your data hard drive is doing now.
If it’s quiet, then we know that maybe it’s not Superfetch! Looking forward to your feedback.
And no, we would never get you flak or ignore you. We’ll sort this out, promise!
Have a nice weekend (and don’t let PC troubleshooting bother you too much, hehe).
Best wishes, Sandro
May 1, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Wow, this is more like chat than a message board. Thanks again Sandro. I’ll take a look at that link, the suggestion Debojyoti had and… see what happens. If it really is a glitch, it’d be a pleasant surprise. I thought I had it nailed.
I’ll be back.
May 1, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Haha, jep, this is now officially the TuneUp Blog Chat board
May 2, 2010 at 10:54 am
Hey guys thinks are getting cooler
I think we should open an IRC (he he he 
Chris, waiting for your log
And Sandro and Chris both of you are right
And Sandro’s really got a cool link
Well just get me that ResHack log an I will make ye a little software that would automatically cure things up p:-)
I hope that would be the best possible help
Tune Up REALLY needs a forum
Happy Sunday Chris and Sandro,
Jeet.
May 2, 2010 at 10:56 am
Sorry for my typos, got it from my mobile
May 6, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I actually had to disable it because it was causing a major headache for me. I am developer and I write a lot of SQL queries that brig back alot of data on my machine. Since superfetch looks at your patterns of memory usage to prefetch applications, i was running into memory issues. At boot it would reserve 2.5 gb of my ram. The only thing i could narrow that to was sql 2008 studio manager. The thre programs i have always open are sql studio, vis studio, and outlook. Just wanted to pass this along. While it maybe true if you don’t start you day with ram intensive tasks, that windows would better at it, i dont beleive in my case that it is so.
May 6, 2010 at 5:38 pm
You are right, Randy. Great but an exceptional issue ! ! !
June 22, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Strangely enough, I never had the problem of all of my physical memory being used up on Vista. Then, upon disabling SuperFetch service, suddenly, 90%+ of my Physical memory is being eaten alive.
Any ideas as to why?
June 23, 2010 at 11:43 am
Hi Chris, this is odd – can you enable SuperFetch again and see what happens over the next 2-3 days? Then disable it again?
Make sure to post screenshots of your Task-Manager before/after and send them to me at sandro.blog@tune-up.com.
Definitely not standard behaviour
Best, Sandro
August 3, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Startup time for applications is all good, but what about performance while your running applications? Does windows superfetch fight over the memory being used by memory intensive programs? When the memory usage drops temporarily, does windows jump in and try to use it immediately? Does superfetch interrupt other processes like games to take advantage of free memory?
August 4, 2010 at 12:53 pm
That’s 4 questions
Let’s get through them:
Startup time for applications is all good, but what about performance while your running applications?
- Superfetch improves performance of your applications a bit, as many parts of the app will be in memory (e.g. loading a plug-in within an application, switching to another part of the program).
Does windows superfetch fight over the memory being used by memory intensive programs?
- No, it tries to free as much memory as it can because of the demand of a memory intensive application.
When the memory usage drops temporarily, does windows jump in and try to use it immediately?
- Yes.
Does superfetch interrupt other processes like games to take advantage of free memory?
- Not sure I get this question. Windows Superfetch doesn’t interrupt processes at all, that would counter the basic idea of it.
Hope I could help
Best, Sandro
August 20, 2010 at 11:44 pm
I hate Super Fetch. I use mail readers that have numerous 2GB files that are read-write type files. When I first got Vista, my machine would hang for HOURS at a time with the hard drive thrashing. Using FileMon, I was able to track down the culprit and see which files were being cached. It really is idiotic that SuperFetch does not learn which files are typically read-only and which files are read/write. What winds up happening is the tool needs to write-back the newly changed files to the hard drive and degrades the PC performance in doing so. Granted, I have 8 Gig of memory, so SuperFetch has the potential to be a real pain (or a real benefit).
Ideally Microsoft would have given us the ability to provide exclusion filters for SuperFetch. Until they do, I will leave S.F. disabled.
August 21, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Hey Tony, I do remember that Microsoft actually had something like that planned – I browsed through many of their blogs (even dating back to Vista) and TechNet resource, but just couldn’t find it anymore. From what I remember: They weren’t able to include a “Choose which programs are included/excluded” but planned it for the next release, which was Windows 7. Well, nothing like that turned up in “7″, so maybe it’s something for Windows 8? Let’s hope!
August 31, 2010 at 3:03 pm
does super fetch use kalman filter?
August 31, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Hi Zach, that information is not disclosed by the Windows team – so it’s impossible to tell without actually looking at the algorithm or directly contact the Windows team.
Best, Sandro
September 6, 2010 at 8:31 am
I can confirm that after using memory hog program (games etc.) and then quiting slows performance quite a bit.
Tried starting a game that uses almost all of the free memory left (200Mb free when loaded), loading a save and then quit. Then launching applications that I use frequently. Browser, audio player and video players starting times had at least doubled.
But if I did the same and waited for few minutes before starting programs, there was no clear difference to normal starting times.
September 6, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Yep, Superfetch needs a bit to repopulate the memory with your usual round of “program cache” (Browser, players etc.) once it flushes it out
Best, Sandro
September 11, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Thanks a lot
very good page
October 17, 2010 at 9:42 pm
hmmm for me, disabling superfetch made my programs start up faster, also my HDD usage is much lower… Chrome, to take something you also tested, took WAY longer to startup with superfetch enabled.
superfetch might work well on 7200rpm HDD, but it certainly doesn’t on my 5400rpm disk.
October 18, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Hey Fred, thanks for the comment! I appreciate it.
I have one question about your test: how did you test the startup time and HDD usage? Did you measure it (e.g. with a stop watch or a tool) or is it more that you notice the difference? I am also struggling with testing actual startup times, since there are many variables that you need to take into account: Starting a program on Tuesday at 2pm might take longer than starting it on Wednesday at 6pm – what if a background program (defragger, backup, updater…) interfered? I circumvent that by using a tool that saves the state of my PC – thus I can always go back to the original state and get bulletproof results.
Looking forward to your feedback, Best, Sandro
December 1, 2010 at 4:48 am
Actually turning superfetch off for older laptops using 1.5gig or lower it’s recommended. I’ve tested both on and off methods and keeping it on only made a few programs worse and with it off it had no issues at all. Windows Updates while doing other things also have noticed no more problems of stalling or freezing after being disabled.
December 1, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Thanks for your input, Titus (shouldn’t you be named TiDus? hehe)! All this feedback now makes us want to start investigating more and more why some folks are experiencing slow downs. Obviously, some intense testing would go into that. I’ll keep you posted.
December 2, 2010 at 5:31 am
Oh, one thing i forgot to mention is most people have had issues with activeX not being able to run on certain sites. All that is required to fix this for the windows XP system is just to access the system bios and disable the Data Execution Prevention killbit (DEP) feature that is enabled by default for most all gateway, dell, and other brands of the same company line. I’ve noticed I couldn’t use it at all for most websites such as adobe until I noticed that was the issue after determining that it had nothing to do with windows explorer not being set correctly for the secruity.
December 5, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Great tip – our readers will appreciate it!!
January 10, 2011 at 5:43 am
after all the problems with superfetch in vista (see my posts above ) I updated to win7 64 and must say ms must have got it right this time . I have not disabled superfetch and I do not have the harddrive thrashing as in vista . If you have harddrive thrashing in VISTA I would definatly still recomend shutting off superfetch . as it runs much smoother
Larry
January 22, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Although Superfetch sounds like a good idea, I had to turn it off in Vista for one simple reason: noise. The disk rattling could go on for 30-40 minutes after boot with superfetch enabled. It wasn’t very smart either. Every time I shut down a VMWare virtual machine, it started reading the several GB large VM file. What’s the point of reading a file *after* I’ve used it? It’s supposed to be prefetch, not postfetch, right?
January 22, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Hey JR, great comment – hope you can help me out! How did you figure out it was Superfetch? Did you use a process analyzer or maybe something else?
January 28, 2011 at 10:54 am
If your hard drive is running on and on and on shut super fetch down and it will stop instantly
January 31, 2011 at 4:38 pm
I guess we’re dealing with rather large files (e.g. virtual hard discs) that you use regularly – I wish there was an easy-to-use exclusion list that you could use to prevent SuperFetch from ever accessing them.
February 3, 2011 at 11:04 pm
I was reading over your article and actually you’re wrong about superfetch in terms of a gaming system. I run world of warcraft on windows 7 x64 with 4gb of ddr3 memory and with superfetch enabled it reduces my game to a crawl of about 4 – 6 fps in many parts of the game world while the game fights with the system to release available memory so it can load the data the game needs.. As soon as this was disabled the game runs smooth with no hiccups like was seen with superfetch enabled.
February 4, 2011 at 4:30 am
Hi Taintted,
Just wanted to make sure, were you using any kinds of trainers etc? And is the game fully patched?
Best, Jeet.
February 4, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Hey there, I got to agree – SuperFetch it not able to slow games down to 4-6fps. Once any application requests memory, Superfetch flushes out of memory instantly – that’s a process that doesn’t require much time. I guess there was something else going on at the time. I’d love to have your systems here and run some tests
Best, Sandro
February 4, 2011 at 2:28 pm
That’s exactly I was talking about the trainer,no CD/DVD patches. They generally tamper with the files to enhance in game performance or the let you go off and play the game even without the disc respectivly. And err… is it a genuine version?
Best, Jeet.
February 5, 2011 at 11:57 pm
no world of warcraft has no trainers, its an online mmorpg and as such it does not need a cd to run but you need to buy the game and have an active subscription to run it. in my personal experience superfetch was not releasing memory when it was required to, it kept it all cached up. I physically checked task manager and every time the game would stutter i would have like 2 or 3mb of ram free and over 65% of it cached up. superfetch has been off for a while now and the system runs faster without it.
February 6, 2011 at 6:29 am
Hi,
Oh, then it’s definately a problem worth eyeing. Maybe some bug etc. Try one thing, enable superfetch and then go to http://goo.gl/9Ytp and download the app. Install it and slide the slider to boost your game performance. Now while Game Boosters scans your system, do let us know what it recommends. Then it can be concluded that is it really a superfetch problem or driver/superfetch conflict.
Best, Jeet.