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Tim Lara
Asked: 2009-05-10 11:50:33 +0800 CST

Is there any way to exclude specific files / directories from SuperFetch?

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Overall, I love the SuperFetch feature in Vista and believe it results in hugely noticeable gains in the launch time and overall "snappiness" of the system. However, sometimes it apparently gets "bored" and attempts to cache huge files in the background that are much too large to fit in available RAM in the first place, such as virtual machine disk files and backup images.

I have searched high and low to no avail for a way to do file exclusions for this reason. Does anybody know if this is possible (or maybe on the wish list for Windows 7)?

windows-vista performance-tuning

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    There's no exclusion list. AFAIK, the only way to refine what going on is this registry key:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

    Modify the EnablePrefetcher key to one of the following settings:

    • Disable Caching: 0
    • Cache Applications Only: 1
    • Cache Boot Files Only: 2
    • Cache Everything (default): 3

    Experiment with this key to see if caching applications or boot files rather than everything still provides enough of a performance boost without getting bogged down.

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  2. That's probably not Superfetch, but the volume shadow service backing up your system.

    Superfetch learns what programs you use and caches those. (See your Windows/Prefetch directory.) It wouldn't be caching huge files.

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