Windows 7 Disk Thrashing - disable ReadyBoot (not ReadyBoost)

[luckman212]

Hello,
I am trying to figure out how to permanently disable the "ReadyBoot" feature in Windows 7 x64 (note: I am not talking about ReadyBoost, that's something else!)

I've checked out some guides that I found online, such as Link Removed or Link Removed - Invalid URL. But even though they seem to work initially, after rebooting my system I find that somehow ReadyBoot has re-enabled itself, and I am still getting tons of disk-thrashing at boot and Performance Monitor shows that it is the ReadyBoot.etl file that is getting all the attention.

I want to turn this off once and for all, does anybody know how?

 

[Radenight]

Hello and Welcome to Windows7forums.com

All I did to disable Readyboot was go into 'Admin Tools --> Performance Monitor' and Readyboot was there as was the option to disable it.. So I disabled it, clicked 'save' and it was disabled from there on out..

It's odd that it's automatically restarting itself once you reboot your pc..

Which version of Windows 7 are you using? (Not that it should matter but I'm just curious..)

 

[nmsuk]

^^ Thats the way I disabled it and it's hasn't re enabled itself yet.

 

[luckman212]

I'm using Win7 Ultimate x64 retail.
It's strange.
Here's how my ReadyBoot properties dialog looks from the PerfMon screen.
Can anyone confirm if there are supposed to be 2 'providers' as I have here?
Link Removed

edit: nope, just confirmed on my other win7 box that its normal to have 2 entries there. Still can't figure out why on earth I can't disable ReadyBoot.

 

[reghakr]

I located this on Microsoft\ssite. It stayes Vista,but it's probably the samefor Windows 7:

ReadyBoot

Windows Vista uses the same boot-time prefetching as Windows XP did if the system has less than 512MB of memory, but if the system has 700MB or more of RAM, it uses an in-RAM cache to optimize the boot process.

The size of the cache depends on the total RAM available, but is large enough to create a reasonable cache and yet allow the system the memory it needs to boot smoothly.

After every boot, the ReadyBoost service (the same service that implements the ReadyBoost feature just described) uses idle CPU time to calculate a boot-time caching plan for the next boot.

It analyzes file trace information from the five previous boots and identifies which files were accessed and where they are located on disk. It stores the processed traces in %SystemRoot%\Prefetch\Readyboot as .fx files and saves the caching plan under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Ecache\Parameters in REG_BINARY values named for internal disk volumes they refer to.

The cache is implemented by the same device driver that implements ReadyBoost caching (Ecache.sys), but the cache's population is guided by the ReadyBoost service as the system boots.

While the boot cache is compressed like the ReadyBoost cache, another difference between ReadyBoost and ReadyBoot cache management is that while in ReadyBoot mode, other than the ReadyBoost service's updates, the cache doesn't change to reflect data that's read or written during the boot.

The ReadyBoost service deletes the cache 90 seconds after the start of the boot, or if other memory demands warrant it, and records the cache's statistics in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Ecache\Parameters\ReadyBootStats, as shown in Figure 2. Microsoft performance tests show that ReadyBoot provides performance improvements of about 20 percent over the legacy Windows XP prefetcher.
Link Removed Figure 2 ReadyBoot Performance statistics