OT: How important is Windows "Superfetch" and is it really necessay to keep it running?

kyoto kid

..OK had a system crash and reboot tonight during one of my last two Luxrender tests which resulted in the system totally freezing up with everything in "not responding" mode, the HDD being hammered constantly, and memory usage over pegged at 10.9GB (out of 12) Even Task Manager was locked up for a while. Before I could shut down the Daz 4.6 Luxrender, and reality I received a Windows message that the system was going into restart mode due to a "critical error". this never occurred in earlier tests and I never even noticed any sluggishness.

After the auto reboot I shut the system down manually and let it sit for a while before restarting to make sure all the memory buffers were cleared. I reopened Daz reworked what I lost, used the purge memory script after I deleted a scene element (which I thought may have been giving Luxrender fits as it just had very old Poser shader files and no Daz CF ones) and relaunched Reality/Lux. Everything seemed to go smooth as before, until I got the "not responding" errors on all three processes again during which a high disk use warning popup appeared relating to a "svchost" process. When I went to the processes tab in task manager I noticed, one of these processes had bloated to over 260MB. Right clicking indicated the particular service causing this was something called "Supefetch" and was also using about 25% of the CPU's resources as well.

When I checked the MS about Superfetch I discovered it is something Win7 (well it actually appeared in Vista first) has that supposedly "anticipates" what applications you use and sort of "readies" them for you. Now that may be fine when you are still at the desktop sage before opening an application, however once you launch a ,programme one would think it would stop and go idle. In this case it didn't and when it hogs as much in both disk time, memory, and CPU resources as it did while I was already performing a different task, I question the merit of such a process. hen I went to the tech forums for some clarification, most of the people who asked about this mentioned it slowed down the boot up process. My system boots up fine, what bothers me is that this process was hogging valuable disk, memory, and CPU resources at a time they were critically needed for another task.

So I am still left to wonder, is this process really that critical to WIn7 operation or can it be safely stopped without harming the system as answers on the forums seemed to be split 50 -50 in opinion?

Takeo.Kensei

If using an SSD I recommend disabling superfetch

Superfetch is not essential and can be stopped. It can be usefull in some case depending on how you use your computer (quicker startup of the most used apps)

maclean

I have an SSD and I've set Superfetch to Manual. Which means it'll start if required, (as opposed to Disabled when it never starts). I just checked, and it's not running atm.

If you're in doubt about any services, manual is the best option. If they're really needed, Windows will start 'em up for you.

mac

Edit - Absolutely THE best site on the net for info on services is Black Viper.

http://www.blackviper.com/