Deleting Prefetch data from Windows?

[theboy]

Is it a good idea? My co-worker told me to delete everything from the prefetch folder in windows but will that make the OS unstable?

He tells me the entire computer will run much faster. By the looks of it I have about 20Megs of data in that folder but worried it might screw something up?

Thanks!

 

[terii]

I delete everything from the prefetch folder regularly. It does not affect operation of my computer

 

[theboy]

Thanks for the reply....however I deleted all the data in the prefetch folder and haven't seen much performance. Maybe its just a myth.

LOL

 

[Gareth]

Deleting prefetch, at least on Vista actually degrades performance than improve. Windows deletes itself on its own.

 

[TFT]

Prefetch actually helps a little in XP as it's holding information for a faster program startup. The problem with the prefetch folder is it will get bloated as it holds info on programs that have long been deleted.

It pays to browse the files and manually delete the ones that no longer exist, either way the prefetch folder will populate itself again as programs get opened.