If one thing is true about using a budget gaming PC, it’s the fact that whatever performance-related issues you might have—it’s never time for an upgrade.
“Something is wrong with the software!!!”
Trust me, I’ve been there.
Sarcasm aside, there are situations where something is actually wrong with the programs installed on your computer. You could be the victim of a malware intrusion or a bitcoin miner. However, these cases are highly specific and deserve a whole separate article to dive into them properly.
What I’m gonna talk about today is the mysterious entity by the name of Service Host: Superfetch. If your PC was running slowly on startup and you checked the task manager, you might have noticed that this little process is taking up almost all of your resources.
So, what is Service Host: Superfetch and why does it stop you from dominating the gaming scene?
Let’s find out.
What Is Service Host Superfetch?
Back in the days of slow hardware and Windows XP, there was an ingenious bit of code that helped our computers process data more quickly. Older hard discs were much slower at reading and writing data than today’s solid-state drives. Also, older computers had much less RAM.
Luckily, Microsoft found a way to relieve our memory woes and speed up our computers. During the time of Windows XP, the service was called ‘prefetch;’ later, Windows Vista introduced the Superfetch service.
How Does Service Host Superfetch Work?
You have a particular way of operating your computer that is slightly different from how everyone else uses theirs. However, your PC is a lot smarter than you would initially suspect and it memorizes your actions.
Why? How?
The Superfetch service works as a background process at all times. It collects data on your computer use and notices the programs and applications that you employ most often.
With its all-powerful knowledge, Superfetch is capable of retrieving information and serving it to your RAM beforehand. It cuts the time that computers usually need to retrieve data from a hard drive. Your RAM works much faster and that helps your CPU complete processes in a shorter amount of time than it would otherwise need.
However, there is a downside to this service that’s been alive since the prehistoric times of Windows XP. It does not apply to your favorite piece of hardware, the wonderful solid-state drive. Even if your computer is a beast and uses the best SSD for gaming, this service won’t do anything for you. However, if you have both an SSD and a hard disk drive, Superfetch will help the HDD, at least.
The service will not interfere with your SSD but it will retrieve data from your HDD.
Problems With Service Host Superfetch
Superfetch service is always active in the background as it either analyzes or retrieves data for the applications in use. That means that Superfetch is always using RAM and CPU resources. If your hardware is old or slow, this has the potential to create problems. If you don’t have enough CPU and RAM resources to sufficiently provide for your programs and Superfetch at the same time, the service will cause a temporary CPU slowdown.
Windows startup can be a critical point. Superfetch can sometimes start retrieving too much information for too many programs during the startup phase. That can cause a much longer system boot time since Windows also has a bunch of programs and services to load.
Even though it can be beneficial to wait for the whole loading process if you are going to use these programs, it’s only slowing you down if you don’t need them.
Superfetch can really be a pesky troublemaker for gamers. This is especially the case if your computer doesn’t use the optimal RAM for gaming. Games are known to consume the majority of RAM resources and that can lead to conflicts with our old friend Superfetch.
The end result will be a fight for resources that can cause significant stuttering or slowdowns while you’re playing a game.
How to Check Service Host Superfetch?
Fortunately, it’s easy to find out what Superfetch is doing on your computer at any given time. Doing a simple check will be enough to tell you if you have any issues with the service. First, you should open the task manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and find Superfetch under the processes tab. However, there is a little trick here:
Windows has changed some of the processes to .dll files instead of .exe files. That means that they cannot be found running independently.
The way to find Superfetch is to look under Service Host: Superfetch. On the right side of the table, you can see the number of your resources Superfetch is using.
How to Stop Service Host Superfetch?
As we mentioned before, you should first check Superfetch under the Task Manager. If you’re not experiencing any stutters or slowdowns during gaming sessions, and if you do not see heavy workload spikes on your CPU or HDD, then you should not do anything about the Superfetch service.
It is not hindering you and therefore disabling it will not produce any visible results.
On the other hand, if you are experiencing stutters and slowdowns, then you can try to turn the Superfetch service off as a solution. It shouldn’t be a huge deal, and you can try it temporarily. Disable the service for a bit and check if doing so improves your PC’s performance while you’re gaming.
There are different ways to disable Superfetch and I’ll provide two viable methods.
Method 1: Disabling Superfetch through Windows Services
This is the recommended way of disabling Host Superfetch. However, if it doesn’t work for you, go over to Method #2.
- Press “Windows”+R or type Run within the windows search box
- Type “Services.msc” under the box “Open” and click OK
Under the list of all services find the one named Superfetch. Click with your right mouse button on that service and click STOP under the popup menu.
Since that will stop the service only during this session, if you want to prevent the service from starting again next time you boot the computer, right-click again and choose Properties. Within the new menu, under the option “Startup Type,” click “Disabled.”
Done! Now, run your favorite game and see if there are any improvements.
Method 2: Disabling Superfetch Through the Registry
- Press “Windows”+R or type Run within the windows search box.
- Type “Regedit” under the box “Open” and click OK
Once you enter registry editor, follow the described path:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
- System-CurrentControlSet
- Control-Session Manager
- MemoryManagement
Once there, do the following:
- Select “PrefetchParameters”
- Double click on “Enabled Superfetch” to open
- Enter 0 as the value in order to disable the service
- Close the registry editor
Run a game of your choosing and check if you see any performance improvement. If not, it means that Service Host Superfetch wasn’t the issue and you should turn it back on by reversing the process.
Final Words
In the background of our operating systems, we can find some ancient but important and hardworking programs. In some cases, we may have never even heard of them.
In the case of Superfetch, it’s a wonderful little program that helps our HDDs out in their time of need. Pre-analysis of computer use and deploying resources ahead of time in order to prepare the computer’s memory and CPU is still helpful for some people in the era of Windows 10.
Seems very useful, right?
However, we have seen that gaming can come into conflict with Superfetch. When that happens during our gaming sessions, it can ruin our gaming experience. In these scenarios, we have to arm ourselves with knowledge so we can learn what the heck is going on. This gives us the opportunity to enhance the overall efficiency of our gaming PCs.
Sources:
- What is Superfetch, Microsoft Answers
- Dominic, What is Windows Superfetch Service, Computer Too Slow
- Thom Holwerda, Superfetch How it Works & Myths, OSNews