[German]Some users runs into an issue after upgrading a machine to Windows 10 Creators Update (Version 1703): The SuperFetch service can't be activated anymore. Here are a few details and the root cause for this issue.
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I received an e-mail from a reader of my German blog, informing me, that SuperFetch can cause trouble under Windows 10 Creators Update.
What is SuperFetch?
Superfetch is a technology, used in Windows, that pre-loads commonly used applications into memory to reduce their load times. SuperFetch attempts to load commonly used libraries and application components into memory before they are required.
SuperFetch won't work after upgrade
In a German forum there is a discussion, that SuperFetch service won't work after an upgrade to Windows 10 Creators Update (Version 1703). The service can't be activated anymore. The user wrote:
I've upgraded yesterday several family PCs to Creators Update .But some programs are launched slower. I recognized, that SuperFetch service can't be launched on these PCs. The service is set to "automatically". If I try to launch this service manually, error 'This requst is not supported" is showns with event id 7023.
Well, on systems with SSDs SuperFetch will be deactivated. But the user seems to run Windows 10 from a hard disk. Searching the web, will bring some hits in forums (Windows 10 – Creator Update: Superfetch won't start after updates – Spanish, Superfetch error under Windows 10 Creators-Update – Russian), where people reporting similar problems.
Swap file deactivated
Some users are disabling swap file under Windows. This wasn't a problem in previous Windows builds. But after Windows 10 Creators Update a deactivated swap file is causing a failure in Windows SuperFetch services. This has been confirmed within this spanish MS Answers forum. Maybe it's helpful for people affected.
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I tested this today and it is true that you can't start SuperFetch unless you have a swap file. I tested this by trying to start superfetch in services and got error 50 with no swapper file. Then I set my swapper file to default and rebooted. SuperFetch started automatically. Since I would rather not have a swap file I will continue to run without superfetch. Unfortunately I never had reason to test before I installed "Creator's Update" so I can't say that it caused the problem, although I suspect it might have.
Glad I wasn't the only one having this issue. Also confirmed this has to do with having a page file. I previously had it turned off. Gave it 16MB initial and 256Max and before I even rebooted, it started up when I hit start. Didn't even have to reboot and I could see Readyboost was now enabled for my USB device. Thanks for this thread. Helped me solve some major headaches.
Superfetch was written to use (it writes small amounts of data to) RAM but it seems some idiot at Microsoft accidentally or otherwise has re-directed it to write to the pagefile (swapfile) It still works but booting is 10-15 seconds slower than when it's writing to RAM.