Attached Link: http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6270_11-5165773.html

Use XP's Prefetch feature to improve system performance by John Sheesley (see link).

"If you're frequently using the same few applications over and over again, prefetching can greatly increase the apparent speed of a system.

Rather than waiting for you to click an icon to start a program, and then loading all of the associated files, libraries, and pointers necessary to run the program, XP has all the components of your programs preloaded. When you click an icon to start the program, most of the hard work is already done."

"The drawback to prefetching is that XP will prefetch a program even if you use it only once or twice. XP will retain a copy of a portion of it in the Prefetch folder. If you have enough unused or little-used items prefetching, over time your system will actually run slower than if you
never prefetched at all. This is especially evident on systems with limited resources." (i.e., Low RAM, crowded, Un-Defraged HardDrive's, etc.)

"As with most Windows XP-related things, you can change the way that Prefetch behaves by making a change in the registry. For low-memory systems, you can even completely disable the feature, which ensures that every last byte of RAM goes toward running current programs, not the ones XP guesses you'll need next."

Taken From Microsoft Website:

Windows XP monitors the files that are used when the computer starts and when you start applications. By monitoring these files, Windows XP can prefetch them. Prefetching data is the process whereby data that is
expected to be requested is read ahead into the cache. Prefetching boot files and applications decreases the time needed to start Windows XP and start applications.

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