Monday, October 08, 2007
SuperFetch or why is my hard drive spinning for 10 minutes when I boot Vista

Ever wonder why your hard disk spins for 10 minutes when you boot Vista?  Basically, SuperFetch analyses your behaviour and pre fetch in memory the apps you run on a daily basis.  Great for an office worker that boots in the morning then runs to the coffee machine but clearly not useful when you're on stage doing a demo, rebooting after a crash or some incident with Beta stuff.

Here's a great article on Tom's Hardware about SuperFetch and ReadyBoost:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/31/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed/index.html

Now, can you disable SuperFetch?  Yes you can but there's no UI, you need to change a registry key.  I found this article via Fernando Guerrero:
http://origamiproject.com/forums/thread/19843.aspx

quote.png
Anyway I disabled SuperFetch entirely by changing..

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnableSuperfetch

to 0 (from the default of 3).
unquote.png

If you can't find the key, just search for EnableSuperfetch in Regedit.

Monday, October 08, 2007 8:41:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [3]  | 
Tuesday, October 09, 2007 9:29:09 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
I guess you missed one node there, at least my regedit path is different:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnableSuperfetch
Koen
Tuesday, October 09, 2007 10:11:58 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
i see a superfetch service that i can disable...doesn't it do the same thing?
timheuer | timAT NOSPAMtimheuer dot com
Friday, November 16, 2007 1:12:46 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
It's easy to disable SuperFetch and/or ReadyBoost on Windows Vista...without
direct registry editing.

"run" services.msc (e.g., press/hold the windows key, then "R", then enter: services.msc)

In the services app, scroll down to ReadyBoost (or SuperFetch). Right click
on the one you want to change. To stop (for this bootup), select "stop".
To stop until you re-enable it, select "properties" and in the properties
panel, change it from Automatic to Manual (or to Disabled).
Stan Sieler | sielerAT NOSPAMallegro dot com
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