Tips & Tricks

Prefetch Clutter

Do you find that it takes longer and longer for applications to open when you boot Windows XP? One common cause is the Win XP prefetch system.

"What's Prefetch?" you ask. It's a way for Windows to pre-load the data needed for running applications before you launch them. It's supposed to make them launch quicker. What actually happens is that programs you hardly ever use take up space and the wrong data gets prefetched.

Good news—these PF instructions can safely be deleted making your boot time faster.

Go to Start / Run and type in "Prefetch" (or go to C:\WINDOWS\PREFETCH). You'll probably see a big long list.

Go ahead and Ctrl+A to select all then hit the Delete key.

The next time you boot, XP will rebuild the list according to the applications you actually use. When I did this it reduced my prefetch folder from 127 files down to 62.

More speed and more space. Yeah!

~ David

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