Disabling Superfetch

[emblem]

I know superfetch is a good application and works for faster computers but what about those with limited ram? Would it make sense to disable superfetch for slower computers that have vista on them? For example laptops with only 512MB of ram yet have vista on them. I'm thinking of doing it to my sisters laptop to see if speeds increase.

 

[Nothinman]

Doubtful, SuperFetch knows how much memory you have so it's not going to try to cache more than that.

 

[nerp]

The best speed increase for your sister's laptop is more memory and OEM decrapification. As Nothinman said, Superfetch is smart enough to not get in the way of running application needs. It won't hurt as much as it won't help in a limited memory environment. Superfetch scales nicely on the way up, though.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: emblem
For example laptops with only 512MB of ram yet have vista on them. I'm thinking of doing it to my sisters laptop to see if speeds increase.

A few thoughts...

Vista PCs with .5 GB RAM usually come with Home Basic, i.e. a born-to-lose version of Vista that needs all the help it can get!

Regardless... .5 GB of RAM will allow Vista to boot & toot, but no matter what you do it'll still be s-l-o-w! Think The Little Engine That Could.

Moving from .5 GB -> 2 GB will provide an instant improvement in Vista (et al.) performance, guaranteed!

My recommendation is to leave SuperFetch alone, install 2 GB RAM and get rid of the cruft... same as the others.

That's what I did to my mother-in-law's Toshiba A205 and it went from being an unusable POS to a fairly nice machine!

 

[Peter]

SuperFetch uses your spare RAM to pre-buffer often used stuff.

If you don't have much RAM to spare, it won't do much. There shouldn't be any need for manual intervention.

 

[soonerproud]

In the case of .5 GB of RAM, you would be better served by getting rid of all the crapware, turn off real time monitoring of defender and remove all the startup programs through software explorer than turning off Superfetch. Disabling all unnecessary services will help also until you can do the RAM upgrade.