You disabled or broke prefetching in some way. Set the Task Scheduler to automatic and reboot, then see if the prefetch files show up, if not that means something else got changed. I recommend running the “Prefetcher Fix” file that will reset all your prefetch settings to their defaults.

You can get that here:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html#Tweaks

What you have loading at startup is irrelevant to Prefetching. Prefetching will optimize whatever it is you have loading. It also dynamically adjusts when things change. So your point is moot. What do you “clean often” because if it is the prefetch folder then you are intentionally slowing down your system each time you do it. Hey if slowing down your system is something you want to do, go right ahead.

Instead of listening to everyone putting their “Two Cents” in and trying to weigh up all the response form the educated to the submlimely ridiculous, I chose to go straight to the horses mouth for advice, afterall these people wrote the system so one would take it they know what their doing. Guess what? its better to just leave it alone. A benchmark test was done visit for the results:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/evaluate/xpperf.mspx

I will be leaving mine alone!

That is completely impossible unless you have Windows Prefetching broken in some manner or you have corrupted prefetch files, which indicates a problem with your system.

Unchecking “everything” in Msconfig can be dangerous if you do not know what it is for.

Something is seriously wrong with your systems if their boot time is being degraded like that. Malware infection is a possibility but you never have to reinstall the OS to correct boot issues. I’ve seen many systems where people ran useless “tweak” programs that broke the prefetcher ect… In most cases though it is simply too much software being loaded at startup. I strongly suggest using Autoruns to clear out the crap.

Dave,

The “defrag c: -b” Windows performs automatically at system idle times (after 10 minutes of inactivity) roughly every 3 days. It simply optimizes the location of the files located in the layout.ini. This is part of the Prefetching optimization. When you run the Bootvis “Optimize” feature it does the same thing.

We use diskeeper and windows defrag. We have a minimum of productivity and email apps yet Windows XP boot time s keep gettign longer. To fdate I have read NOTHING that will explain how to get the system running quickly again without reinstalling.

BTW the MacMini continues to be fast to boot as the Mac OS handles apps very differently, much more like DOS. The OS runs a stable platform on which apps open and close withourt embedding code all throughout the OS, so the OS doesn’t have to chug through all sorts of nonsense. When I want to delete an app I trash the directory. No need for an uninstaller to go grab orphaned files scattered through out the OS. Nice.

To clarify I support 6 Windows servers, 2 Unix servers, 45 PCs and 1 Mac. I need answers and am not wanting to start a religious war on why the Mac is superior.

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” Albert Einstein

DV

I first thought that the system boot was much faster, because the black Windows boot screen was there very short. The blue bar just went one time to the right and the desktop began to load. Before, the blue bar was spinning about 20 or 30 times from left to right.

This is highly deceptive, because when I got out my stopwatch I found out that with prefetching my system booted more than 10 seconds faster than with the prefetch folder cleaned.

IMO people believe that cleaning the prefetch folder helps because the boot screen appears for a much shorter time.

Keep the fight going, Ed. There are still lots of “tech sites” that suggest cleaning out prefetch.

Systems slow down due to installed applications that load things into memory at bootup, HD Defragmentation and Malware/Virus infection. Also as time goes by your HD will slowly wear out. Registry Keys have no effect on performance, Temp Files have no effect on performance and Prefetch files only improve performance. Most used systems need to be cleaned but from Malware/Viruses and installed applications and then defragmented.

Here is some more on the Registry Cleaning Myth and all the Prefetch Myths:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html

Regardless you can easily bring your system back to it’s original speed by using a guide like this:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html

Lost A Hour Of My Life,
Prefetch can not start trojans but they can ironically accelerate their loading. That is because the prefetching is indiscriminant. It will accelerate any applications load regardless if it is malicious. There is another Myth I address on my page:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html

Malware/Viruses – Some people irresponsibly recommend cleaning this folder due to possible Malware/Virus infection. Malware/Viruses can place an infected file(s) in any folder and the Prefetch folder is no different. Do these same people recommend deleting the contents of the Windows folder because it is a popular location to find an infected file(s)? Of course not, you simply clean or delete the infected file(s) not the contents of the folder. This Myth got started due to the indiscriminate nature of the Windows Prefetcher, which will Prefetch any executable file that you load or loads during Windows start up. Thus it is quite common on an infected machine to find a Prefetch (.PF) trace file in the Prefetch folder with the same name as an infected executable. These files are NOT Malware/Viruses. They are there to improve the load time, in this case ironically, of the Malware/Virus but do not contain any infected code. Once the associated infected executable is deleted, these Prefetch (.PF) trace files do nothing and will eventually automatically be cleaned by Windows.