Another little known speed tip for Windows XP is to delete the contents of your prefetch folder. But it can be a hassle to manually navigate to C:\Windows\Prefetch and then highlight all the contents and delete them just for the sake of a speed tweak.
However, there is a way to automate the process so you can keep your prefetch folder nice and clean each time you restart your computer. Follow along with these simple steps and see how easy it becomes to automatically delete the contents of your prefetch folder.
1. Right-click on your desktop and select "New - Text Document".
2. Type the contents of the following line so your new text file looks exactly like the next screenshot:
del C:\Windows\Prefetch\*.* /Q
(Note: You can copy and paste this text if you want to be precise.)
3. Save this file as "deleteprefetch.bat" into your "My Documents" folder. You'll need to manually add the ".bat" in the "File name" line before you save the file so it will become a batch file that can be run from a command prompt. Here's another screenshot as an example:
4. Now navigate to your "My Documents" folder where you just saved "deleteprefetch.bat". Right-click on it and select "Create Shortcut" from the resulting context menu. This will create a new file called "Shortcut to deleteprefetch.bat".
(Note: The following step can be tricky for some people so pay close attention.)
5. Click and drag that shortcut icon and hover it on top of your Start menu button. Don't let go of your mouse button just yet. Hovering it will bring up your Start menu so you can then move and hover the icon over "All Programs" and finally move and hover it over the "Startup" menu item. Keep holding the mouse button and move the icon into the actual menu group that belongs to "Startup".
6. Okay! Now you can let go of the mouse button to place that shortcut into your "Startup" menu group.
What you have just done is create a batch file that will automatically delete the contents of your prefetch folder. When you placed a shortcut to the "deleteprefetch.bat" file into your "Startup" group, it will automatically run each time your computer is started.
It should be noted here that your "C:\Windows\Prefetch" folder will never remain completely empty after a fresh reboot. That is because each time Windows XP restarts, there will be other programs that will load just after your deleteprefetch.bat file has completed running. But in any event, your prefetch folder will no longer pile up with literally hundreds of prefetch files that Windows XP will have to sort through.
If you ever want to stop this program from running, simply right-click on "Shortcut to deleteprefetch.bat" in the "Startup" group and select "Delete". In the meantime, your Windows XP computer will enjoy slightly faster performance.
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