Talk about Laptops

One of the things many people hate about Vista is how even when they’re not doing anything, the system would keep thrashing your hard drive. Vista has a few services which work in the background & they’re the reason for scraping your hard drive. The 2 major ones are

Windows Search
Superfetch

Windows Search is responsible for indexing the drive for faster search results. Useful, but not compulsory, this service definitely works your hard drive up in the background. If you’re using some other indexing service like Google Desktop etc, then you should definitely turn this off.

Superfetch is a funny service. It ‘tries’ to learn your operating behavior, & apparently would preload applications for you. Interesting in theory, I’m not sure if it is worth it .. since for most part it is constantly using the hard drive. Could be useful if you’ve a very set working pattern, otherwise not, at least in IMHO. Personally, I’ve turned both the services off to keep me & my notebook hard drive happy.

Here is how to turn these services off, as well as disable them.

Start Button -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services

1. Locate ‘Windows Search’.
2. Right click & take properties OR simple double click it.
3. If Running, press the ‘Stop’ button.
4. Click on the ‘Startup type’ drop down, & select ‘Disabled’

Now locate ‘Superfetch’ service. Repeat steps 2-4.

Click on File-Exit to quit Services.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Tweaks & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.