Windows* Prefetch

Windows* Prefetcher places files for your most frequently used applications in a cached folder so they will load faster. This feature was introduced in Windows* XP, improved in Windows* Vista*. While a useful consumer feature, it can affect benchmark results.

We recommend cleaning the Windows* Prefetch folder by deleting the contents of this folder:

c:\windows\prefetch

This only needs to be done between testing of individual benchmarks. We generally recommend running benchmarks five times in Windows* Vista* and taking the median score. You may notice your scores improving slightly in latter runs, as the Windows* Prefetcher* gets application files into the Prefetch folder.

System Settling

To allow your system to settle into an idle state:

1. Reboot your computer.

2. Open the Task Manager by right clicking on the Taskbar and clicking the option for Task Manager. Click on the Performance tab in the Task Manager.

3. Click on the Resource Monitor button in the Task Manager. This will bring up the Resource Monitor Window below.

4. Click on the Pane that says Disk. This will allow you to view the various active requests to the disk drive.

5. Watch the Resource Monitor. The number of requests to the disk will gradually decline. Wait until there are no more requests to the disk as shown below.

6. After there are no more requests to disk, close the Resource Monitor.

Next, execute Process Idle Tasks by calling the ProcessIdleTasks API from advapi32.dll from the command line, or create and execute a batch file with the following command:

rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

The table on the next page describes the how to perform an initial setup of Windows* Vista.