Everytime a new version of CCleaner is released you bring up the same thing about the prefetch cleaning. The first time it was fine, I thought you would learn your mistake and not do it again. But you've never stopped and this is beginning to be too much. Your idea that deleting still used prefetch files will slow down application load times is true, but you're skewing all the facts and giving the public wrong information (kind of like all the other articles you write). "First you should never delete a .pf for any installed application. With the .pf file missing, that application will take up to 100% more time to load when you decide to launch it." If you don't use a program for 2 weeks you're definantly not going to notice it taking longer to startup. Also if you ever run a defragment (which everyone should be doing), that program may change where it is stored on your hard drive. If that happens the program will take just as long to load whether you have a prefetch file or not. That's why the prefetch files have numbers after the name and why a lot of time you'll have multiple prefetch files for the same program each with a different number. "Second, it is quite common to disable the NTFS Last Access Time Stamp for performance reasons. I actually recommend doing this since it speeds up the file system. In this case CCleaner will delete any .pf file that was created over two weeks ago." This is totally untrue. Everytime a prefetch file is used it is also modified. CCleaner only deletes prefetch files that haven't been modified in two weeks. So regardless if this setting is changed or not will not make a difference. As long as you use a program once every two weeks you will not lose the prefetch file. So please stop informing people of wrong information. You've been caught doing this before in MANY of your articles and this one is no exception.

I haven't skewed ONE fact, you simply cannot comprehend how prefetching works. Which is not surprising most people are clueless about it. You should NEVER delete a prefetch file for an INSTALLED application. Your nonsense about not noticing it taking longer to start up because you have not used it in two weeks is completely ridiculous! Why would you deliberately waste your own time for no reason? Just because you will not remember how long the application took to load is not an excuse to deliberately slow it down? What kind of nonsense is that? Why are you deleting these files anyway? Because you can? That is just ignorant. Are you deleting them for space!!? Please the whole folder is usually under 5MB. What you are saying makes absolutely no sense. You don't even understand how prefetching works. Prefetching does not record where the file is located on the HD! Prefetching records all the files that are loaded into RAM when an application starts. Normally an application will bring these files into RAM individually. With Prefetching they are all brough into RAM simultaneously. These greatly improves an applications load time. This performance enhancement ALWAYS improves performance regardless of the fragmentation level of the files on the HD. Yes prefetching ALSO uses the layout.ini to specially arrange the prefetched files for even faster access but this is a SECONDARY optimization and something that ONLY the prefetcher can do using the defragmenter. Simply defragmenting the HD will NOT provide this secondary performance improvement by itself. And it is IMPOSSIBLE for defragmenting to provide the PRIMARY performance enhancement that Prefetching provides. "This is totally untrue. Everytime a prefetch file is used it is also modified. CCleaner only deletes prefetch files that haven't been modified in two weeks. So regardless if this setting is changed or not will not make a difference. As long as you use a program once every two weeks you will not lose the prefetch file." Yes it is TRUE!!! The maker of the frickin program says CCleaner checks the Prefetch file's NTFS last access date to confirm wether it has been accessed. So disabling this feature and running CCleaner will delete ALL the prefetch files!!! Test it yourself!! Regardless this is idiotic!! The only prefetch files that can be safely removed are ones that are UNINSTALLED!!! The Windows Prefetching component will AUTOMATICALLY remove files based on their installed state. So manually cleaning the folder or using utilities like CCleaner is COMPLETELY pointless and does nothing but hurt the load times of installed applications. I highly suggest you read up on how Windows Prefetching works from an expert such as Mark Russinovich at Sysinternals. He has forgotten more about Windows than you know.

I always knew that deleting my prefetch data will do that. But to be honest I dont care. The first time I start the application again it will take longer (but not that much longer, its bullshit), yes but at least after each HD defrag it will place those files all in the same directory and not half the directory in the middle of the HD and the other rest at the end when I get a new application. Who the hell cares? everyone should know that it WILL kill your performance if you use ccleaner every day. I only use it like once or twice a month with all options turned on, as do my friends. I dont see a problem with that. If you dont understand all the options in this program you shouldnt use it at all. That easy. Btw just an example for startup speed: Internet Explorer starts extremely fast, while FireFox take quite a bit longer. Still people dont care (neither do I). Youre letting it sound like we all gonna have to wait 20-30 secs longer. Thats BULLSHIT.

Wait you know it will slow your system down but do it anyway? What kind of logic is that? Why not simply run CCleaner by unchecking that useless option? Defragmenting has NOTHING to do with ANY peformance enhancement created by prefetching. Defragmenting simply takes files that are broken into pieces scattered around the disk and puts them back in one piece it does NOT rearrange files for optimal prefetching only the prefetcher in conjunction with the defragmenter can do that. You can use CCleaner all the time so long as you simply uncheck "Old Prefetch Data". And yes you can see 20-30 second difference on large applications, such as games like Battlefield 2 or Quake 4.