Uploaded August 2011 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
A little known tweak that can help you gain some performance on your XP Professional (and Windows Server 2003) related systems is to periodically empty the prefetch folder. The prefetch folder is used to help speed up the loading of programs; XP will load programs it thinks you need before you ask for them yourself.
Prefetch when unattended can also slow down your system. This is because over time
XP will retain a copy of a portion of a program in the prefetch folder even if you only use it one time, which is not good. Since you may not use the program again, you may impact the performance of your system by having portions of a program you do not use loaded in your system's memory.
XP systems with very low hardware resources (such as memory and hard disk space) will definitely be affected by an over-bloated prefetch folder.
A little known tweak that can help you gain some performance on your XP Professional (and Windows Server 2003) related systems is to periodically empty the prefetch folder. The prefetch folder is used to help speed up the loading of programs; XP will load programs it thinks you need before you ask for them yourself.
Prefetch when unattended can also slow down your system. This is because over time
XP will retain a copy of a portion of a program in the prefetch folder even if you only use it one time, which is not good. Since you may not use the program again, you may impact the performance of your system by having portions of a program you do not use loaded in your system's memory.
XP systems with very low hardware resources (such as memory and hard disk space) will definitely be affected by an over-bloated prefetch folder.
