If hacking and lipo-suctioning an operating system is necessary to run Vista on a notebook, this certainly speaks volumes of Vista's operating efficiency.
Mainly because it isn't sophisticated enough to support backwards compatibility to any degree whilst still actually being more bloated than Vista.
Wrong, sophistication has nothing to do with it. OS X is exponentially more sophisticated, more efficiently designed, and does not carry all of that redundant baggage called 'backward compatibility code' which plagues Vista. Although OS X has more lines of clean, efficient and well maintained Open Source code than that of Vista's heavily patched code, OS X can easily run on an MSI Wind, (faster than Ubuntu) without the pairing down and hacking required to run Vista. Sophisticated? Vista is shackled by it's own stranglehold of primitive patchwork.
Well, if you read the article you would have noticed that they actually agree superfetch is useful if you have more than 2GB of memory installed, preferably more than 4GB which, given Vista is designed to roll in 64 bit operating systems (which is why you have the choice of installing either 32 or 64 bit versions), and the way we're going is what it's built for.
Preferably more than 4GB?? and you find this acceptable? First of all, with more than 4GB RAM, applications will open quickly enough to render superfetch unnecessary. Furthermore, what a waste of resources. Please read the comments, written by Vista users other than myself, found at the end of the link you have enclosed, which address the issues of uselessnes and inefficiencies of superfetch:
1. January 26, 2008 11:38 pm
Peter
Thanks. I always disable it because it runs for long time after log into Windows and its quite annoying.
2. January 27, 2008 2:09 am
Daniel Spiewak
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.
3. January 27, 2008 7:14 am
Charles
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.
4. January 27, 2008 2:25 pm
Gary
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.
5. January 27, 2008 8:51 pm
The Geek
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.
6. January 31, 2008 5:51 pm
Jordan
Yay it worked.
7. February 20, 2008 8:54 am
ebe
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..
8. March 9, 2008 9:30 pm
Larry
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?
9. March 26, 2008 4:38 am
John Celia
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!
10. April 21, 2008 12:40 am
Maxwelldon
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.
11. May 14, 2008 10:55 pm
Ccy
hey guys!how do i turn superfetch on?
12. May 19, 2008 2:17 am
photomstr
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!
13. May 19, 2008 5:10 am
Rich
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.
14. May 28, 2008 10:17 pm
BooBear
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
15. June 21, 2008 9:39 am
Chris
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.
16. July 5, 2008 4:49 pm
Sylvia
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!
17. July 12, 2008 10:15 pm
Xoch
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.
18. July 15, 2008 4:50 am
Bill
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.
19. July 20, 2008 1:00 pm
Joe
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.
20. July 26, 2008 8:53 pm
khaled
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?
21. August 15, 2008 9:58 pm
Dee
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…
22. August 16, 2008 2:48 pm
switch
So in your haste to find an article that supports your view you actually end up showing why its wrong and you miss the point of what superfetch does anyway.
Is that so? Read the above reactions to superfetch.
Like I said, you obviously have no idea of what superfetch or, indeed, Vista actually does.
Before using a pejorative tone with me, realize that your accusatory statements are highly uncalled for and not appreciated by me, or others on this site. Furthermore, in lieu of this subject, you are in no position to make judgments on a personal level, period. Although your defense of Vista's feeble features, such as superfetch, remains a mystery to me, as it would be to others who have voluntarily disabled it, I have refrained from making any derisive personal statements about it.