Die Superfetch Die!

[Sheridan]

My home PC is a Windows 8.1 - which is ok and generally performs well (for an i3 with 8GB) for what I need at home.

 

However I notice frequent 100% disk activity at startup which can really slow down the machine - I managed to isolate this to the superfetch process. So I disabled it in services - but it keeps re-enabling itself!

 

Its annoying to have this problem, but even more annoying when Windows re-enables services that I've specifically disabled, has anyone else seen this behavior in Win8.1?

[Ephelyon]

According to a number of sources if you Google around, disabling SuperFetch can actually be a bad idea. If you're noticing the slowdown on startup though, one source suggests setting the service to "Automatic (Delayed Start)".

 

This has actually got me interested in the SuperFetch debate though (which seems to be rife). I can understand the benefits touted for a home machine, but where you have hundreds of users hot-desking around the site every 60 minutes or so, opening vastly different applications each time (from the individual workstation's perspective), is there a good case for disabling it on school workstations? Do any braver members feel like trialling that in a single suite (deploying service config through GPP)?

 

Le EDIT: The first post here would seem to describe your problem exactly: http://www.win2008workstation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1201&start=32

Edited February 22, 2014 by Ephelyon

[Sheridan]

I've read a few of the 'disabling superfetch is bad' threads across the web but the simple fact on my PC is - I get major slowdowns and delays (stuttering youtube videos etc) and killing the superfetch process brings my PC instantly back to life!

 

So I'm of the mind now that I don't care what its supposed to do, it just causes problems on my PC (and I've done 2 seperate fresh installations as well, both with the same result)

 

I've tried with several AV products, or none at all and its always the same. If I leave my PC for at least 10 minutes after boot then it seems ok and nicely responsive, however superfetch can pop up and drag it down again! Oddly though disabling it in the services manager doesn't actually disable it. I've now found a registry hack so I'll see how that goes.

[Ephelyon]

Just found this:

 

SuperFetch - Change Prefetch Data to be Cached - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

Doing that instead might solve both problems. Guessing you've found something similar. Perhaps this would be a better thing to try at school rather than disabling the service outright as well.

[Sheridan]

That's the registry hack I used to disable superfetch! After a reboot I found the superfetch service is still running and has changed its startup to automatic again!

 

Obviously there is something in windows that is reverting this back to automatic startup no matter what I configure.

[Ephelyon]

That Registry entry doesn't affect the startup state of the service, only what it does once it's active.

[Arthur]

I notice frequent 100% disk activity at startup which can really slow down the machine

Get an SSD. Problem solved!

 

How long does the disk activity last for and do you have a lot of applications running at startup with a high startup impact?

 

[Sheridan]

I've disabled the service and also done the registry hack and the damn thing still starts up! Ghosts in the machine!

 

Without superfetch I would say it takes a minute or so for the disk activity to settle to a normal pattern (ie activity only when you're doing something) With superfetch enabled the disk activity stays at 100% for at least 5 minutes and has a noticeable effect on performance.

 

My only startup items are AVG, an audio control panel and Bluetooth. You can see these fire up at startup and settle down to 0% disk usage pretty quickly. Superfetch seems to kick off soon after that.

 

Time for me to superfetch a beer. Sorry.

[Ephelyon]

Tried the Delayed Startup option?