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You are at tk here: Why windows takes so long to start up? Because you followed the advice of the article!

If you read digg regularly, you should have read a recent article about speeding up Windows boot times. I'm referring to this article, for those who have no idea what I'm talking about: Why windows takes so long to start up

Well, there's just a small problem. It tells you to delete all the files in your prefetch folder. And I can tell you right now if you do that it could make your computer slower. If you've read my recent post, you'll know that deleting layout.ini in your prefetch folder may prevent prefetch from running ever again! Yes, prefetch will be gone from your computer forever and you can change all the registry keys you want (I'm talking about prefetch registry keys, which you shouldn't be touching anyway) and it won't come back. You can confirm this by looking in your prefetch folder if you have already done this. If it's still empty, then prefetch is not working. Another consequence of this is that some defrag programs (probably the Windows one as well) rely on layout.ini to know where to optimally put your files. So deleting all the files in your prefetch folder is really a double whammy on your computer. Lastly, if layout.ini doesn't exist, Windows defrag will crash trying to defrag the drive Windows is installed on.

So what's the solution if you already did this? Once again from that post, make sure the task scheduler service is running (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services -> Task scheduler -> set it to automatic), run this command "rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks" without quotes in command prompt or Windows run (Win+R). This command as it says, tells Windows to process idle tasks like prefetch or System Restore. Normally it's done every 3 days while Windows is idle, but for some reason if layout.ini doesn't exist, prefetch isn't run. After you've run the command, wait a bit for it to create the prefetch files. If you check task manager or process explorer, you should see defrag.exe and dfrgntfs.exe(if you have ntfs disks) running. Some other processes such as wmiadap.exe and rundll32.exe may also be running. Wait till your harddisk activity is low (should only take a few minutes) and everything should be done. Check your prefetch folder and layout.ini should be there, possibly with some other files. You can safely restart if you want or you can continue using your computer.

To wrap up, you shouldn't touch the prefetch folder. If you want to change the prefetch registry keys, use this program. If you want to clear your prefetch folder, do it manually and leave layout.ini there or clear everything out and run the above command.

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