prefetch and regedit-

I have been working on a friends laptop- it had virus's and missing files, wireless errors when recovering from standby, ie8 errors when downloading any active-x- 5 different programs to view video's- every piece of junk hp wanted the list went on- nero and norton- no programs but foot prints all over the place.....

Now things are much better- its clean and had a field day with add/remove programs and autoruns. Installed ccleaner, spywareblaster and avast. (For some reason ad-aware made THIS computer crawl- I don't get it but they are not all created equal.) installed k-lite codec pac to replace the removed video programs.

The current problem is low memory- 512. this is compounded by new software like windows live and itunes. When I got this thing it had less than 100 mb of ram available- sometimes waaaaay less. this was only running task manager. This now has 225-275 available with nothing ™ running.

This morning after a slow- (3-5 min.) boot up I opened ie8 (at least 1 minute start to google) did more research and came up with prefetch- differing opinions but went ahead and looked in folder anyway- found over a hundred .pf files in it- pages of them- there were many from programs that were deleted. I removed all but a few and rebooted twice letting it 'sit' for a couple of minutes each time. It now boots quicker and ie8 INITIAL load times went down to less than 10 seconds. Clarification- the old minute load time was only for initial also- after that approx 10 sec.- secondary load time from button to google are currently 2-4 seconds. I am happy with the current boot/load times.


The Problem: What are the definitions of AppLaunchMaxNumPages and AppLaunchMaxNumSections?

Prefetch 'cleaning' made a huge difference on THIS laptop but it will fill up again and bog it down- Sue won't be able to clean it so I want to limit it to boot, ie8, windows live messenger, ccleaner, avast, itunes, and word. Nobody really cares if solitaire takes 1 or 3 seconds to load. the above programs are the ones that are run often or are 'big'.

What I would like to do is limit the number of application files in the prefetch folder due to low memory and a slow processer.

What I do not want to do is change the allowable size of these files.

I am thinking that pages and sections are size and number of files but not even sure of that-

Anybody know this one?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"VideoInitTime"=dword:00000b3b
"AppLaunchMaxNumPages"=dword:00000fa0
"AppLaunchMaxNumSections"=dword:000000aa
"AppLaunchTimerPeriod"=hex:80,69,67,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff
"BootMaxNumPages"=dword:0001f400
"BootMaxNumSections"=dword:00000ff0
"BootTimerPeriod"=hex:00,f2,d8,f8,ff,ff,ff,ff
"MaxNumActiveTraces"=dword:00000008
"MaxNumSavedTraces"=dword:00000008
"RootDirPath"="Prefetch"
"HostingAppList"="DLLHOST.EXE,MMC.EXE,RUNDLL32.EXE"
"EnablePrefetcher"=dword:00000003

Edited by Bill1821, 19 March 2010 - 11:03 PM.

Have you tried using performance tweaks to enable greater performance. Go to My COmputer right click on it then go to Properties then to the Performance tab.

Yes, In the system properties I have pretty much left things in their default positions.

Lower them to the left.

Can you post the system specs?

I don't know why prefetch gets picked on sometimes! You ahve twice as much memory as me, so maybe we need to take a look at your memory and manage it differently.

Mark Russinovitch and David Solomon, for instance, wrote an excellent article called Windows XP Kernel Improvements Create a More Robust, Powerful, and Scalable OS in the December 2001 issue of MSDN Magazine. Their technical credentials are impeccable, and they speak very highly of effectiveness of this feature and describe how it works - and why you should leave it alone.

It doesn't matter how you think it works or how manipulating the folder may help your system. It is not important how you think it works. What is important is how it really works. Read the article and you will know how it works and why you should leave it alone.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc302206.aspx

Read the article and the section on prefetch yourself and do some testing. Forget what you have heard, what you might think, what is some humble opinion. Those are not facts that can be measured and probably not from any scientific method. They are opinions, things that seem to be faster, might be faster, could b faster.

Test the stuff yousrself and you will know for sure. With half your memory I have:

Timing from power up, starting with the first beep (POST code) to the point where the hourglass cursor disappeared.

With a full Prefetch directory:
... 0:50 to login screen
... 1:08 to desktop

After emptying Prefetch directory:
... 0:58 to login screen
... 1:57 to desktop

This is a repeatable experiment with consistent reliable results. No guessing, no maybes, no IMHO. You can measure it.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11183-0.h...204&start=0

Now tell us about your system.

Click Start, Run and in the box enter:

msinfo32

Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select All, Copy and then paste the information back here.

There will be some personal information (like System Name and User Name), and whatever appears to be private information to you, just delete it from the pasted information.

This will minimize back and forth Q&A and eliminate guesswork.

Post up a screenshot of your Task Manager:

Notice in the TM example below, the Virtual Memory column display has been enabled in TM. This is very good information for troublehooting and understanding. To do that:

Right click the Taskbar, choose Task Manager and select the Processes tab.

Click View, Select Columns, check the box that says: Virtual Memory Size. Expand the width of the Task Manager box so you can see all the columns and processes.

Double click a column heading in TM to sort by the column. For example, sort Task Manager by the CPU or Virtual Memory size column.

Take a screenshot of what you see in Task Manager (see below for instructions).

To create and email/post/print a screenshot:

Press the Print Scrn button to copy your entire screen to the Windows clipboard.

Press Alt Print Scrn to copy just the active window to the Windows clipboard.

Open MS Paint:

Start, Program Accessories, Paint

When Paint opens, press CTRL-V to paste the clipboard, save the new Paint file to your desktop or someplace you can remember. JPG files take up less hard disk space than BMP files and just as readable.

Make as many screenshots as you need. Practice makes perfect. Be careful your screenshot does not contain any personal information. Practice viewing your images before you upload them to be sure they are okay.

Some sites will let you attach a file directly to your post. If the site has some kind of attachment/upload function it is usually easiest just to use it.

Edited by joseibarra, 20 March 2010 - 08:27 AM.

Read that atricle yesterday morning- I like prefetch and maybe things sped up because it was loading uninstalled programs- or because there were 128 of them- I dont want to disable anything I wanted to change the 128 program limit to 28?. less stuff will load faster and I only really care about a few of the applications starting faster. And yes the first boot up after 'changing' things was quite slow- but as files were replaced they got much better- boot up will always be a bit slow due to ccleaner and avast- that is ok though.

But enough explaining here is the info requested--

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name PC259930897212
System Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard
System Model Pavilion zd8000 (EC300UA#ABA)
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 1 GenuineIntel ~2793 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Hewlett-Packard F.33, 7/7/2005
SMBIOS Version 2.31
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2111)"
User Name PC259930897212\Sue
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Total Physical Memory 512.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 161.47 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.95 GB
Page File Space 1.22 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

(note avast icon started spinning while opening limiting available mem to 161) (I think)


cool- never knew how to save a screenshot like that, Thanks..

 TM1.JPG   125.7KB   13 downloads

when I 'got' this thing there were 69 processes running with only task manager running..

Note when this screenshot was taken ie8, system info and task manager were running proceses. -

Edited by Bill1821, 20 March 2010 - 02:13 PM.

I would get more RAM that would greatly increase your computing performance.

Yes that would be beneficial however this isn't mine- if it was then I wouldn't have started this thread (I think) . It belongs to a co-worker of my wife and she may or may not want to do that- I will price some from newegg and give her the option. This machine seems to run out of memory much more often then than cpu so this is a good thought.

That doesn't look too bad and good job on following directions and we know a lot more now.

I have done a lot of reading testing with prefetch under various conditions and adjustments. If you start messing with it, you either have negative results or you want to mess with it more and then mess with it all the time - at least that is what happened to me. After reading more (and those MS guys are sometimes pretty C-A-T smart) and a zillion reboots and timings later, I just decided it was best to leave it alone and stop tinkering.

Some more RAM will help and may be a good investment.

If you want to do more tweaking, you can use Autoruns from those MS people - you have some things running that I would not consider "required", like jqs, helpctr and a few others. I don't like Avast personally, but some people love it. You could make a startup performance test, disable it temporarily and retest and see if the improvement is worth it. See what other services you don't "need". Don't get me started!

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb963902.aspx
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

Crucial is good for memory shopping too - answer a few questions and you're on your way:

http://www.crucial.com/

I would install Firefox and later Chrome and use it instead of Internet Explorer. Your Internet experience should improve greatly - if that is where the complaining is coming from (My Internet is too slow!). If you don't like it, uninstall it. The adjustment period to a new browser takes a little time. You still need IE on some rare occasions, but if you start using FF I don't think you will ever go backwards to IE! You can have both or all three browsers - or more. I hardly ever use FF anymore and used to think it was the greatest thing...

What do you mean when you say the machine "runs out of memory". What makes you say that?

Edited by joseibarra, 20 March 2010 - 04:42 PM.

jqs is running because I am java ignorant - I updated it and left everything on automatic (except update cuz it seemed to be a little bit too worried about it) the helpcenter must have been running because it is not currently a process-

Avast seems to be working well on this computer but it has been miserable on others in the past- or maybe they 'fixed' it- when it came to me it had a mcaffe nightmare-ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I will leave prefetch alone and instruct my wife to 'let her know to call' if system slows back down. I did hours of looking into this and couldn't find any info on the functions of the particular commands. The hexidecimal values can be aquired while in regedit by changing a toggle during the modify sequence, but info on what parameter is actually being changed is not available. I am not really qualified to experiment with this and it could take many full days of empty/refill the folder (to max) for every trial- not into that much trial and error. If this wasn't an old system then maybe so but w7/vista and superfetch running on a system with 3+ gb of ram make this totally unneeded. The new systems work great.

The cpu vs. memory thing is a totally unscientific observation- several times opening large apps while task manager was open I noticed available ram was down to below 10 while cpu usage was maybe 50%. Don't remember if I did this while process explorer was open.

The owner of this laptop accesses the internet the same way she does when she is at work- Their office uses windows live messenger and live hotmail- anyway- she opens messenger- clicks her mail icon from within messenger- ie8 opens the mail box so the windows live toolbar - all her links- etc are already running. This is why I didn't add firefox- I do have it on my desktop though and lovin it!

I am thankful to you for your assistance and liked learning something.

I am also thankful our (Cheri and I) desktop/laptop are not xp machines (I love my w7 and 8 gb of good ram) (laptop- vista-3gb- 0 tweaks because it still runs great!)


Thanks again,

Bill

Edited by Bill1821, 20 March 2010 - 06:22 PM.

Well, good luck!

Sounds like you are on your way to computing bliss .

That silly jqs adds 24.08 seconds to my boot time... it may be right for some folks but it is not right for me:

http://www.java.com/en/download/help/quickstarter.xml

JQS adds nothing to my boot time.

JQS adds nothing to my boot time.

Yes I didn't notice anything either BUT the java update function was really burning up elecrons. (I don't really remember the details because I have been through much lately but it was bad bad bad.)

After looking at that link I think I will switch it off in the java control panel- Why waste another 20 mb of ram :-)

Kinda funny how things that cripple one system will be just fine on another- like avast- lol. (It was terrible on my daughters xp computer)

Thanks again guys.

Bill

Edited by Bill1821, 20 March 2010 - 08:35 PM.

Cryptodan - what method do you use to measure your boot time?

Don't print much - turn off spoolsv till I need it (I'll get a message). Don't need your help, turn off helpctr! ctfmon, dumprep, adobe reader_sl, etc... gone, gone, gone. Zero startup items, no non MS services even if they aren't "doing" anything at the moment except occupying a line in my Task Manager. It's gotta start up sometime and keep running looking for stuff to do that it will never find.

I will take every spec of memory and CPU I can get.

I measure my boot time from the point I hit the power the button to the point I can use my computer. Takes me less 1 minute to do so even with all my start up items.

91 Processes:

Intel Q6600
4Gigs PC2-5300 Kingston ValueRAM
2x1.5 Terabyte Seagate 7200.11
eVGA 680i SLi
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit.