How to Disable SuperFetch on Windows Vista
The SuperFetch service in Windows Vista preloads your system’s memory with the applications that you use most often. This makes launching of those applications much faster, but it might be an unwanted behavior for system tweakers or gamers.
There’s no hard evidence that enabling or disabling this service will increase performance in general, but if you open and close applications often you should definitely leave it alone. You will have to test your configuration to know for sure.
Note that I don’t recommend disabling this service, but we try to cover how to do everything on Vista.
Open up Services in Control Panel or by typing services.msc into the Start menu search or run boxes.
Double-click on Superfetch in the list to open up the properties, and then change the drop-down to “Disabled”. You can also click Stop to immediately turn it off.
I don’t recommend this tweak for regular users, but somebody might find it useful.
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Thanks. I always disable it because it runs for long time after log into Windows and its quite annoying.
I might actually do this. I’ve often noticed that SuperFetch loads the “wrong thing” more often than not, leading to extremely slow startup for the app I really want. It also will do odd things to my system while I’m in the process of using another app, though this is more infrequent.
I agree with Peter. I disabled SuperFetch and my Vista experience has been so much better. My PC seems more responsive and faster than before. Also, one big thing, gaming seems to be even smoother now. That’s just my opinion, but see what happens and experiment. I think you will be surprised.
I tried turning SF off and the only change I noticed was the lack of disk activity during the login processing due to the absence of preloading programs into memory by SF.
If you think about it for a moment SF should not decrease performance. If a program requires memory then Vista will just take it. It’s not as if SF locks the memory it uses. Of course the programs in memory that are forced out will have to be read from disk again but that’s the way it is without SF.
IMO SF is a great feature. Of course your mileage may vary.
I’ve personally had a noticeable speed increase from disabling superfetch… I typically keep most of my applications open all the time, so it’s not really very useful to cache them anywhere.
It’s not the memory usage that is an issue, I really have no problem with that since I have loads of memory… it’s the hard drive access I’m not fond of, especially in my laptop with the much slower drive.
It’s the same thing I experience with Firefox… I don’t really care about the memory usage, but it seems like it’s always taking much more CPU than necessary.
All that said, I think it’s probably unwise for the “average” person to disable it. Microsoft will continue to tweak the algorithm over time and make it better… perhaps someday we’ll all actually want to keep it enabled.
Yay it worked.
Hello, Ram is required when you do a lot of Virtual LAB..!
I doubte vmware/virtual server, when checking RAM availability, will see that it can purge some garbage from SF! SF is just an aberation^^
But as it can be disable.. it’s now ok. (I upgraded to XP just for this reason and others (like no adminpacks, no this or no that). I need all bit of my physical ram (3go) for my labs..
Superfetch is a disaster. Much like rest of Vista, in my opinion. All day, superfetch eats up CPU and disk cycles loading programs into memory. And if I open up an unexpected memory hungry program, it dumps it all. Then it starts loading stuff into memory all over again. How long does it take to load IE Outlook, or Word anyways? Especially on today’s machines?
SuperFetch is always re-reading (among other things) a 7.5 gig file into ram. Are you seriuos? What the hell? My hard drive NEVER stops churning!
Thanks for this “tweak”, I always wait long while up on boot and had to listen my HDD go load all day long because of superfetch.. After I disabled it, HDD been nicely quiet and PC acting a bit faster for what I’m using it.
hey guys!how do i turn superfetch on?
I now love vista even more!!! super fetch is crap, you want vista to behave more like xp disable this useless program. I have always hated the way MS assumes it knows best about defaults and preferences! KILL SUPERFETCH and its just like xp only more secure. thanx very very much, I tried the trick and love the idea totally!
This is a must. Do it. You wont regret it. Games like cysis and Bioshock load faster so what is the point of haveing it on at all.
Thanks much for this disabling SuperFetch tip. I think this is what’s been driving me crazy when I try to do multitrack recording and get stuttering from interrupted CPU cycles or whatever. The performance manager shows tons of files being read and written even though I’m not trying to use them. This tip isn’t included in some optimization guides for DAWs (digital audio workstations) but really should. Thanks
Thank you. This covers what is by far the worst aspect of Vista, the horrendous noise it makes has been destroying me deep inside for too long now and i really appreciate this fix for it.
Wow…I already thought I was neurotic…being extremely annoyed by this constant grinding noise. Calling Sony- they even sent me a new HD ! But I had to return it because it was even louder!
Now my Laptop is quiet and I can finally relax !
Thank you so much!
This is remarkable. I have read on numerous threads how turning off this feature can ruin system performance, but it seems these people speak out of opinion and not of use!
I installed a 3.6 gig file on my desktop, which i cant erase because Superfetch locks its out, then takes all day and night to read it; burning my HD out in the process! Screw that. SuperFetch will remain disabled as long as Vista wont crash without it.
Toodles.
When i had super fetch on my two fast and noisy hard disks never stopped going and my case rattled all day… Now the hard disk only goes when i do some thing.
Thank you very much for this tip. I’m not sure if turning Superfetch off has helped performance much, but it has definitely stopped the harddrive from going on so long after start up and repeatedly thereafter.
That alone is a HUGE help, because I have a HP tx2500 tablet pc. The harddrive is right underneath where I rest my right hand when typing and using the touch pad!!!! It was ALWAYS warm.
annoying is all it is… damn microsoft…
the only reason i upgraded to vista was to use all my memory.. only to find that it all goes down to zero available… in a matter of minutes.. now with this disabled. i can see my memory free..
but here is the deal.. not all of it is still available.. i should see at least 3 gigs right?
in fact thats what i see when i boot up..
then 1 gig gets cached over time.. sometimes even more!!!
i use my computer as a DAW and am wondering does this affect performance?
whats being cached and can i disable it? will it improve performance?
but where does my ram disappear? with superfetch enabled all the ram was cached..
now only some get cached.. and thats after doing some house cleaning… moving files navigating around.. listening to music files is the only thing.. but i can see the ram being freed after media player is off.. so.. as using cubase.. i can see the ram being freed up…
i only use the computer for 1 application.. thats cubase 4… nothing els is running at all.. most services are disabled… i have a 512 Geforce 8600 GT card which is taking alot of resources.. but i like the aero interface so i think ill buy more ram to keep things happy anyway…
any ideas?
I am a new (as in 12 hours new) Vista user. I have been using Windows XP and Linux for years. I just found out about SuperFetch a few minutes ago. This is the most useless feature ever for an operating system. How does it know what programs should be cached. It’s a different story if we can set which programs to cache manually, then it will be a very useful feature.
For now, I dont see why we have to enable it. Like one of the previous comments, how long does it take to load a program from hard drive to memory anyway? I like to keep my memory free, so whenever I need to use it, I dont need to flush it clean first. That’s just silly….
All in all, Vista is a very beautiful operating system. But this SuperFetch is a total disaster. It’s great to know that we can disable it…
Any idea how to force Superfetch to cache particular applications?
I understand that SuperFetch ‘learns’ the user’s pattern. Is there a location where SuperFetch logs its learning data or something, and where to remove it after disabling the SuperFetch service if any?
i do like to know if disabling SuperFetch will cause problems in the system it self and if i disable it can i have better performance while playing games ??
ty
Yeah there probably is, but I doubt you would be able to use it. I don’t understand why everyone is shiting Superfetch. My current usage is only 1.07 GB of Physical Ram while also running a Norton scan and Age of Empires 3. So you’re telling me you dont have that much to spare?
Fact is Superfetch is good for general users, BAD for gamers, I got 4gb and it caches up all of my RAM for things I may not even load up, and it doesn’t improve performance for gamers because all that data thats filled up RAM as cache, needs to be written back to the hard drive when I start up a game to make room for it, and most decent games these days use about 1-2gb of RAM, so effectively its slowing down memory intensive applications.
The only exception here is if you only play one game on your pc, then most likely it will cache that game into RAM for you within 5mins of having started up the PC, but my pc is super fast as it is, and I have Pagefiles disabled, with 4gb RAM its not needed. And I will have my game loaded manually way before superfetch will cache it for me.
The main reason i checked up on all this is because I was getting out of memory errors while playing games, but only sometimes, and that is because with pagefiles off the data cached into RAM can’t go back to a pagefile on the HDD to make room for the game data in RAM and it just runs out of memory, but now with superfetch turned off you don’t get junk loaded into your RAM and it stays empty for the things you will actually use. This is really only something for slow computers not up to the 6.0 performance rating of Vista.
The other thing it does is use your HDD much much more and will very likely reduce the life of it, unless of course you leave your PC on all the time. Superfetch will leech data off your HDD to your RAM’s capacity everytime you start up, in my case 3.5gb more than necessary 1-2 times a day, that adds up to a lot over a year.
Hope that helps you guys out to understand this.
Also for those who don’t know why their memory is filled up with Cached Physical Memory and they have no free memory in Vista, its a result of Superfetch and of course there is no need for concern for games not having enough RAM / memory provided you have the pagefile turned on with either USB or regular HDD, because the cached physical memory will shrink itself in one way or another to free up RAM for your applications or games, just don’t expect the majority of them to load fast, because superfetch is made for small/medium sized programs and only as many as can fit into cached RAM.
Good luck all.
Disabling Superfetch works for me.
For months every time I resumed my PC from hibernation it would be unuseable for 15 minutes while the disc churned, that 1.25 hours of lost time every week.
Disabling superfetch now gives me 12-13 minutes of extra useful time every single day, wonderful!!
Disabling Superfetch has made great difference on my system.
I recommend this. Wake up Microsoft.
Disabling Superfetch works GREAT for me.
+ prefetch to boot only files
Freed up 5% ram usage, of 3.2 GBs
No down side I can see. Will do this on all my friends P.C.s
thank you!
Superfetch is a waste of time. The log file it creates is loaded on boot. Working as tech support I constantly get the same question “Vista is taking ages to load”. After a year of use on Vista this file can slow boot times ridiculously, I’ve heard customers complaining that Vista takes in excess of 20 minutes to boot. Disable superfetch, its back down to 1-2 minutes. This is simply a good idea but praticed very very badly. For windows 7 this feature is being removed (and yes windows 7 is just a rehash of Vista), so even microsoft has seen the error of its ways.
I think every Laptop – users should disable it. It makes the machine so much more quiet, it’s awesome.
@Ccy
Superfetch In Vista Is A Good Concept But As With All Microsoft Windows Software, Implementation Of These Concepts Is Bad! However For Some Reason You Want To Turn On Superfetch, [Win]+[R]> [Services.msc]> [Superfetch]> [Right Click-Properties]> [Startup Type-Automatic]> [Restart System]
There Are Many Tools That Boast Of Enabling Superfetch In XP…..XP Does Not Support Superfetch!
OMFG!! THIS IS SOOO COOL.. I didn’t know I could turn this thing off and have my system running so smooth!! .. This is amazing… performance wise the system is a dream, CPU usage is now under control and ram is always good
…. Good gosh I hope MS don’t screw up Windows 7 by adding something like SuperFetch in there……..
Disabling superfetch degraded Vista performance so it became like old good slow XP
Actually, no big difference, but starting programs takes time now…
So i’m back to SF.
It does not take memory as some people think here. It allocates, but It frees it on the first request, to be more specific.
Microsoft engineers and their weird ideas. I read that the reason they included SF is because they look at memory as nothing more than a place to buffer programs and data between the Disk and the CPU. That’s crazy. Memory is the place you execute programs from. The last thing you want is for memory to be full of other programs and data you’re not concerned with, leaving your main application out in the cold until there’s enough free memory.
I first noticed a problem when it seemed to stutter as I was streaming music into a recorder. I had used the same setup before with Win2K and never had a problem. But in Vista, it was hesitating horribly. More recently, I was playing Blacksite: Area 51, a high graphics intensity game. It would crash at the same points. I acted as if it had run out of memory. So I disabled the SF and voila, works like a charm.
SuperFetch are kinda annoying. With 6gb of RAM it load both useful and non useful stuff into RAM. It recently fkd up my comp. I’ll have to somehow fix it or reinstall Vista.
It loaded a 3gb big .rar file with 200-300 files (from my E: drive) and that made the other programs I tried to start not to start. So I stopped SF as it cached the files within the .rar file. And now, all non Windodows programs wont start except from the firewall and the Logitech software.
Grrr, I’ll lead a mob against SF…..
not only does super fetch waste cpu cycles and hdd io accesses but it totally burns the life of your hard drive. i have had to replace my new hdds after only a year with vista. i have seen this problem with various tech support clients. super fetch is solving one small problem while creating bigger one. loose it and save time and money.
Recently started using a laptop to play World of Warcraft and for 20 minutes after I booted the computer the disk churn would make the laptop unusable. WoW has a lot of very large mpq files and the disk activity was crazy. I also had a few issues during game play. Best thing any gamer can do if they have disk activity is to turn this crap off.
Wow! What a difference turning off Superfetch makes! I recently replaced a second drive with a larger 1TB drive and thought I was having hardware issues and would have to return the drive. Constant drive thrashing left no processor time for even simple tasks (i.e., click Start button, wait 30 seconds for menu). Performance Monitor showed constant reading and writing to the pagefile even when not running any apps. My PC was totally unusable. The drive thrashing stopped as soon as I disabled the Superfetch service! My theory is that while increasing disk space, had I also added additional memory, Superfetch may have performed just fine because it was working ok before I added the larger drive. If this is true, then Superfetch may work fine given adequate resources, but this also would mean that Superfetch is not very fault tollerant and needs additional development by Microsoft. My PC is the foundation of my business (DJ) and I would like to thank everyone here for helping me solve this problem. Thanks everyone!
Damn, what a huge difference!
I’ll never turn it on again, Farcry 2 use to crash to desktop every few minutes with the HDD churning away as soon as the crash happens, now I can play it for hours on end and it only crashes back to desktop on rare occasions. Just another braindead “inovation” in Vista from MS ( along with disabling HAL for directsound . But that’s a story for another day………….. )
Superfetch in my opionion is one of the stupidest things microsoft ever came up with.
In games it will slow the freeking hell out of them. When a game or any major development application unloads some of its data only to load difrent data is when this “superfetch” thing gets in the way, trying to load some other process in your memory slowing the crap out of anything you are currentlly doing.
Superfetch is trying to geuss the future of the users actions wich is imposible for most computers as they may have multiple users using the same user account and other things. Who ever came up with the thing has no common sense.
I think it was mostly a marketing stratagy to sell a product, seeing as Vista is realy the same thing as XP, 2000, 98 or 95. It just has better sercurity wich we all know is MS biggest down fall. If you look at the way the oporating system is organized its practactlly the same thing as windows 95. I meen hears microsoft saying they rewrote the oporating system, but for what? only to use the same organizational metheds that are from the windows 95 erra, wtf.
This is just a bunch of crap to sell you and corporations the same thing.
Dont get me wrong I like most of what MS is doing, but holy freak will they please “Realy Redesign” there OS! They have on every thing else but the core of things.
When i first started to use my new PC about one year ago, the first thing i did was to disable this thing.
I worked well all the time. A few month ago, i decided to upgrade the box a bit and added a kick-ass video card as well as aditional 4GB ram. I now have 6GB ram. I thought “Why not try to enable SF now that i have loads of ram?” I worked well the first weeks, and it DID speed up loading a bit, but as the days passed, it started to cache all kind of crap, in actually cached Fard Cry 2 AND mirror’s edge, at the same time! in addition to everything else… The last weeks, the hard drives has never -and i mean NEVER been silent, they have churred around the clock. I cached upp all my 6GB of ram, and i started mediaplayer, and it flushes it all, only to re-cache it. I de-activated the service a few minutes ago, and as soon i pressed the “Stop service” -button, a wiered silence filled the room…. The drives was finaly silent, after weeks of churring!
just built a new pc(amd 7750 black edition 4GB corsair xms2 gigabyte mb 500GB hd hd2900pro graphics)using vista home premium 64bit, and after about 15mins on a game windows shuts down and starts dumping memory or says SUPERFETCH has stopped working!!! Since disabling SUPERFETCH i have no shut downs or the dreaded blue screen of death and pc seems much faster and games look smoother and faster.
@Jaster: If you’re doing tech support and Vista is taking 20 minutes to boot, you’re doing something wrong. I’ve been using Vista for almost 3 years and I’ve never had a 20 minute boot time. What’s likely happening is that those computers are on a domain and the computer is looking for the domain and not finding it (which, has been fixed in Windows 7).
Also, Super Fetch is not removed from Windows 7. I’m using Windows 7 RC1 now and it’s enabled by default.
I just turned off SF, and noticed that immediately I could open tabs in IE8 much more quickly, i.e. milliseconds, whereas before I disabled SF, it took up to several seconds to simply open a new tab in IE.
What I don’t get is why they didn’t have superfetch only do its thing when there were idle resources available. How much intelligence would that have taken?
hm i wonder if SF is the main cause my game crashed last time. new to vista btw. with SF on, i start my game, after 3 mins, the game crashed with BSOD memory dump error. maybe i should try disable SF and give it a try again.
Thats right SUPERFETCH is enabled by default on Windows 7 RC1, I have an AMD Quad Core 940 3.0 Black edt, 4 GB DDR2-1066 OCZ Reaper, 500 GB HDD and with the SF on it consumes a lot memory just as booting up the computer, with this OFF it runs FLAWLESSLY!!!
I also turned off Superfetch, but had to turn it back on after
loading up coral Video Studio X2 i have a Q6600 with 4GB of ram with Vista 32bit
in Video Studio X2 when loading a few movie files into the timeline and playing them back
i notice the videos would play back very choppy my Free ram went from 2.5 GB to 0 in a few minutes
and then the Page File started going up and up like crazy video playback on the timeline was very
choppy, then i turned SF back on, rebooted, ran Video Studio X2 again.
and everything worked great no more choppy video and the Page File did not go up as much.
So it looks like some apps may still need SuperFetch.
i looks like without Superfetch the used memory is not freed,this could explain the Page File getting
so large in Video Studio X2
I also disabled superfetch. I have dual velociraptors in Raid 1 so I get double the thrashing. I simply don’t understand the point of using superfetch. On a slow system it makes it unusable, on a fast system it’s just downright annoying not to mention all that thrashing doesn’t extend the life of your hard drives. Besides, if you have a fast system with the latest sata drives and fast ddr2/ddr3 memory, you don’t need to cache programs as it will load everything quickly anyways. It seems so counter-intuitive. Like some people say on here, its a good idea in theory gone bad.