folder (typically C:\Windows\Prefetch). The name of the boot trace file is always NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.PF, and application trace files are a concatenation of the application's executable name, a hyphen, a hexadecimal representation of the hash of the path the file resides in, and a ".pf" extension. Applications that host other components (i.e. Microsoft Management Console or Dllhost) have the name of the loaded component included in the computed hash as well; this results in different trace files being created for each component. Note that the Task Scheduler is the process responsible for parsing the trace data collected by the prefetcher and writing files to the prefetcher directory. As a result, the prefetcher will not operate correctly if the Task Scheduler service is not started. To further improve access times, the Task Scheduler calls Windows Disk Defragmenter every three days. When the machine is idle, the lists of files and directories that were referenced during the boot process and application startups is processed. The processed result is stored in Layout.ini in the Prefetch directory, and is subsequently passed to the Disk Defragmenter, instructing it to re-order those files into sequential positions on the physical hard drive. This will further improve performance by minimising the distance that the hard drive's heads have to be moved from one file to the next. It is possible to trigger this re-ordering (by running "Defrag.exe %systemdrive% -b" from the command line) without running a full defragmentation. If the system is installed on a solid-state drive, ReadyBoost is disabled. Configuration The Prefetcher's configuration is stored in the Windows Registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters. The EnablePrefetcher value can set to be one of the following: 0 = Disabled 1 = Application prefetching enabled 2 = Boot prefetching enabled (default on Windows Server 2003 only). 3 = Application and Boot prefetching enabled (default). The recommended value is 3. Values higher than 3 do not increase performance, and changing the value to 2 will not make Windows boot faster. The EnablePrefetcher value does not affect Superfetch. Incorrect tweaking of the prefetcher Often found on the Internet is the "/prefetch:1" application tweak, which is a valid but misunderstood switch. It is used to distinguish between different operating modes of an executable in case those different modes would have significantly different prefetch traces. A second myth is that the user should delete the prefetch folder contents to speed up the computer. If this is