Vista Superfetch & Prefetch with Media Portal (1 Viewer)

[gperkinson]

Hi,

I was hoping to hear from other members about their experiance with Vista Superfetch / Prefetch and Media Portal. More specifically Vista 32 bit with SP2 and Media Portal V 1.0.2.0.

With Superfetch on, my machine seems to go into periodic disk thrashing which affects the playback on Media Portal in either Live TV or Recorded TV, especially if multiple things are going on e.g. timeshifting live TV and perhaps recording another 2 programs.

I see Superfetch is linked somehow to Prefetch, but I have done no research on this. I also see you can change registry settings for Superfetch to change it's behaviour. I also have no idea of the downstream effects of disabling Superfetch, however I have done this and my disk activity has greatly reduced - however, when opening a Media Portal recording for the first time, it went jerky for the first 3 minutes where I then searched back 2 minutes and it came right - during this time I was copying files from my hard disk to a USB stick, so that definately had an impact.

My machine also has internet explorer & Handbrake which I use periodically, so the right options need to consider this.

Any advice or experiance sharing would be appreciated.

Regards

Graham

 

[gperkinson]

Does anyone have any experiance around this??

 

[Owlsroost]

I run a similar setup, and I turned off Superfetch ages ago (for the same reasons - too much disk activity at times when you don't want it). I have normal prefetch enabled, but I can't remember which prefetch registry settings I settled on - I'll check when I get a chance.

I've recently been experimenting with running with the swap file disabled - no problems so far and it does seem to make the system more responsive (but don't try it with less than 4GB RAM - my system uses (commits) about 1.8GB of RAM with MP and a few utilities running, so I've got reasonable headroom).

EDIT: My current prefetch related reg settings are below:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters]
"EnableSuperfetch"=dword:00000000
"EnablePrefetcher"=dword:00000003

i.e. superfetch is off, and prefetch is fully enabled


Tony

 

[gperkinson]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the note - I really appreciate it. I cannot believe how much quieter my hard disk is now that Superfetch is off!! I used to get high disk activity which included disk activity on the 1TB USB drive I have connected which interupted playback - is that the sort of thing you were experiancing??

Do you (or anyone else) know of any downsides to turning off Superfetch? A lot of forums with "experts" are saying that it's a good thing by utilising unused RAM and caching programs, however how is this useful with and HTPC which runs MediaPortal most of the time?

Another quick question - once it is turned off, is there anything else that should be looked at e.g. cleaning out files it has created??

Thanks again for your comments - much appreciated.

Regards

Graham

 

[Owlsroost]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the note - I really appreciate it. I cannot believe how much quieter my hard disk is now that Superfetch is off!! I used to get high disk activity which included disk activity on the 1TB USB drive I have connected which interupted playback - is that the sort of thing you were experiancing??

Do you (or anyone else) know of any downsides to turning off Superfetch? A lot of forums with "experts" are saying that it's a good thing by utilising unused RAM and caching programs, however how is this useful with and HTPC which runs MediaPortal most of the time?

Another quick question - once it is turned off, is there anything else that should be looked at e.g. cleaning out files it has created??

Thanks again for your comments - much appreciated.

Regards

Graham

In order of the questions:

1.Yes

2. Not for a dedicated HTPC - superfetch is about trying to pre-emptively fetch/cache programs/data to minimise response times. Vista seems to use 'spare' RAM for disk caching anyway - which is a sensible thing on an HTPC.

3. Not that I know of. If you are chasing down disk activity, you might want to look at the System Restore settings i.e. how often and when it creates automatic restore points.

Tony