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Windows Prefetch files are basically log files created by the windows operating system. They contain information on the files accessed during Windows boot-up and 1 minute after boot-up to account for other applications loading up in the background. These log files also contain in which order these files are loaded during boot-up. By setting the configuration for the log files, you can have windows log the applications and files the user accesses while in windows as well. It does the logging intelligently, only adding the files if windows believes those files will be accessed relatively frequently.

If you enable this option, windows will create a (.pf) prefetch file for each program that has been logged in windows. Each (.pf) prefetch file contains information on the behavior (information primarily on the order in which files are accessed by the program) of one application; the application that it is named after. Of course this will not happen, unless you set the configuration settings in the registry. The reason for this is because by default windows just keeps track of files accessed during boot-up and 1 minute after boot-up has completed.

It sounds like you might not want to delete these files.

13 years ago. Rating: 1
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