Windows Prefetch
Facing the prospect of reformatting and reinstalling Windows XP on my laptop isn’t pleasant. I scoured the net this past weekend in search of alternatives and found a controversial technique involving the Windows Prefetch system.
I cleared my prefetch directory once and set the registry value to only prefetch “boot system files.” After the 2nd reboot, I noticed a large performance boost when starting up that has remained consistent throughout the weekend. I also noticed that there’s now only one file in the prefetch directory.
I’m pretty happy with the modification and don’t plan on touching any of this again (since it looks like I don’t need to). But of course, caveat emptor. 
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There is no controversy. Windows XP boots in the exact same amount of time with the value set to 2 or 3 except now with 2 you just crippled all your application load times. Leave this at 3 for optimal performance.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html
Clearing the prefetch folder is also a myth.