Do You Lose Anything by Disabling Search Indexing? SuperFetch?
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Saturday, May 16, 2009 2:18 PMCall me old school, but I like my computer to do only what I want when I want it, and I want exact results.
Things like SuperFetch and SearchIndexer rub me the wrong way. Yes, I understand they're supposed to speed things up, but what I find instead is that they do things at unexpected times, and operation of the computer is in general a bit less deterministic.
1. I prefer to wait for a search of the hard drive, and to know the search results are up to date with everything and anything I've just done to the files.
2. I'll wait for the system to load whatever I want to run from the hard drive. I buy good workstation hardware to lower that wait. I'm not fond of the idea of the computer pre-fetching stuff I've used just in case I use it again.
Messages in various places imply that disabling search indexing will simply slow the return of results. Other people have said disabling SuperFetch doesn't harm system operation.
What I want to know is whether these things are 100% true.
Specifically, can I disable SuperFetch (SysMain service) and SearchIndexer (WSearch service) without loss of functionality? I've seen it documented in this forum that people ARE disabling these things. I am just looking for confirmation that some essential or important piece of other functionality won't be lost upon disabling these features.
It's clear Windows is moving away from this "keep it simple" philosophy, probably to suit the masses who use their computers for entertainment. Frankly I'm VERY thankful that Microsoft at least still provides some methods for deconfiguring the extra "gee whiz" stuff for those of us who'd like to get real work done with our systems.
-Noel
All Replies
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Saturday, May 16, 2009 2:26 PMfor you would be the best to set superfetch and prefetch in the regestry to 2
like me http://www.abload.de/img/superfetch077o.png
you can also try superfetch to set to zero ,to disable
if you deactivate superfetch at service,than windows has problems for the boot optimization.! in the folder C:\Windows\Prefetch\ReadyBoot- Edited by 10101010 Saturday, May 16, 2009 3:06 PM
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Saturday, May 16, 2009 4:35 PMDisabling superfetch will basically return you to XP level performance. Most folks disabling this do so because they think its better to have 6 GB of RAM "free for MY programs".
What's the point of having 8 GB of RAM if it is going to sit there unused? Would you like the OS to only use 1 core of your Core 2 Quad CPU also? Of course not.
Vista and 7 use RAM to cache everything possible. It does this ONLY when the RAM is otherwise unused. When you load up more apps or data, it is a simple matter to flush the cache of the least used stuff, but chances are what you want is already there. RAM is no longer some rare, expensive resource to be used as miserly as possible. It should be used to the fullest extent possible, to improve overall performance.
This is along the lines of folks disabling the pagefile, because "I have enough RAM and don't need it". The system is designed to always have a pagefile.
You are definitely "old school"! I used to be, until I saw how much better Vista (and 7) perform than XP with lots of RAM. I was converted to New School! -
Saturday, May 16, 2009 4:56 PM Please don't assume I'm not using my RAM fully. I am quite often using most or all of my 8 GB (and my slots are full and RAM isn't free, so going larger isn't feasible right now). I use my workstation heavily.
You're saying PreFetch and Indexing back themselves down if other applications need the memory, but I've seen otherwise (though I would be hard-pressed to produce objective results to prove it). I have been using Vista x64 Ultimate as my main OS for quite a long time now. It was only when I deconfigured search indexing that I felt the computer was more under my control again. There are still things the system does - reading through my Outlook .pst files for example - that I can't explain and which do definitely take resources away from the tasks I want to do.
Having the disk drive running, pre-indexing the hard drive seems just plain silly in my world, and it DOES cut into performance because disk operations in progress have to be completed before on-demand applications can get to the disk. The typical searches I do normally take seconds anyway, so why pre-index? And what assurance do I have that a pre-indexed search will include results from recent file changes? Lastly, I am not at all happy with the "fuzzy" UI of the Vista/Win7 search capability anyway, and I often tend to go to 3rd party search tools. From an overall perspective I just don't need nor want pre-indexing functionality. And so the question remains whether removing it will make unexpected things not work.
My approach is generally to leave things enabled until such time as I know I want them off, using as much knowledge as possible to help make that decision. Hence my question here. I plan to leave all the Win7 features configured per Microsoft's install until I find something about them that bothers me.
-Noel- Marked As Answer by Mark L. FergusonModerator Sunday, May 24, 2009 3:10 PM
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Saturday, May 16, 2009 8:44 PMI agree on Windows Search since I so seldomly search in manners/areas that really benefit from it. But if you study Superfetch in Windows 7 you'll notice that it uses very little RAM compared to Vista. That irks me since I typically have half of my 8GB of RAM going unused, but it should be to your liking.
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Saturday, May 16, 2009 11:00 PMinstead of disabling it modify it and remove as much as you can so it only has start menu in list seemd to work better for me
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Sunday, May 17, 2009 9:43 AM
I agree on Windows Search since I so seldomly search in manners/areas that really benefit from it. But if you study Superfetch in Windows 7 you'll notice that it uses very little RAM compared to Vista. That irks me since I typically have half of my 8GB of RAM going unused, but it should be to your liking.
I don't agree. I hate Windows search on XP/Vista because it was slow and never find correct things.
But in 7, there are search boxes on every window (look in the top right) and even in the start menu (at bottom).
The start menu box will search all your installed programs, folders, etc ... and even let you type a direct command like in the "run" box !
=> I don't organize the start menu items anymore. It was (and is still) a pain to do. I always use this search box instead. -
Thursday, February 18, 2010 1:43 AM
I agree on Windows Search since I so seldomly search in manners/areas that really benefit from it. But if you study Superfetch in Windows 7 you'll notice that it uses very little RAM compared to Vista. That irks me since I typically have half of my 8GB of RAM going unused, but it should be to your liking.
I don't agree. I hate Windows search on XP/Vista because it was slow and never find correct things.
But in 7, there are search boxes on every window (look in the top right) and even in the start menu (at bottom).
The start menu box will search all your installed programs, folders, etc ... and even let you type a direct command like in the "run" box !
=> I don't organize the start menu items anymore. It was (and is still) a pain to do. I always use this search box instead.
Luckily, you do not need search indexing enabled for the start menu's search to work. Which is good, because I'm in the camp that hates the search indexer because of constant problems with it (its database likes to corrupt a lot it seems).
As for superfetch, that turned into another fail here, it keeps crashing every other day after a few weeks period of no trouble, so finally disabled it once and for all. System is speedy enough that it doesn't make a difference I can notice (and I game a lot too). Maybe will enable it again though if a related hotfix comes out or SP1. heh -
Thursday, February 18, 2010 2:36 AMThanks for your inputs.
At this point I've disabled the search indexer, after learning that NTFS has a significant bug ("atomic oplock" problems). So far searches seem plenty fast enough and if anything more accurate.
I've left prefetch turned on and so far no problems. I do like that programs like IE load in a fraction of a second.
-Noel
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