What's with Windows prefetch?
 

I know what it does, but lately there have been programs in the prefetch trying to access the 'net.

I don't know what this is all about, the latest file is named SS_CDT_SETUP.EXE-15849267.pf. My firewall picked it up.

What should I do about this? Or is it normal? Spybot didn't pick anything up.

From the google searches I did, looks like that proggy is spyware/malware/adware and should be deleted.

I have 70 files in the prefetch, but which files are supposed to be in there?

Prefetch is part of the operating system. You delete it and it will be recreated. It is kind of like a cache for your accessed sites and files.

Deleting them will have no effect on your system, except for maybe a little speed initially as it recreates the things 'pre-fetched'

TweakXP has a tool to automatically clear your pre-fetch...but some wise souls discourage cleaning the prefetch too often.....this is after all an OS cache.

-bear

jBear's right, prefetch is the OS's ability to "pre" load frequently accessed programs to make those programs start faster, but that does suck up RAM to do that.

If your havving a problem with low resources, you can turn off pre-fetch, which frees up resources, but makes programs run slower. THe details on how to do it are here:

http://www.tweakxp.com/tweak1796.aspx

To clarify the part re: spyware, it sounds like you have spyware and it just happens to be prefetched in the OS like many programs that are run. I don't believe that prefetch is the source of your problem, instead it's the spyware. If you clean the spyware, the "prefetch" part should go away too.

Here's a thread re: spyware removal:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=48137

I have a quite similar problem, but the file is named DVD CREATIVE TRAY.EXE-1A855F0E.pf I've tried almost every spyware cleaner (ad-aware SE personal, Spybot, Bazooka and Spy Sweeper) But none of them seem to help.

It makes my computer so slow that even opening the firefox takes few minutes. I can make my computer temporarily faster by pressing ctrl + alt + del and closing all 3 or 4 processes called "Dvd creative tray.exe", but after some 30 or 40 minutes they all start again and my computer becomes slow again :| Does anyone know how to fix this?