How to Clean Out The Prefetch Folder

XP uses a system called ‘prefetching’ to organise and preload some of the data necessary for commonly- used applications and files.

 

A folder called ‘Prefetch’ is used to store the information XP needs to carry out this operation. After several months, the ‘Prefetch’ folder may become overloaded with references to files longer in use.

 

It’s a good idea to manually empty the older files out of the ‘Prefetch’ folder every few months or so. 

To do this, go to ‘C:Windows Prefetch’ and delete all the .PF files that are older than a week or two.

You will gain some hard disk space, and may be a little boost in performance.