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winxp file cache

Postby torhu » Sat Jul 01, 2006 7:57 pm

Does anyone know how to empty the file cache in winXP? By 'file cache' I mean the file fragments that the OS stores in memory in case a process requests them again. I need to to it in order to be able to test loading times without doing a reboot between each run.

Pretty hard to find anything about this with google, because 'file cache' and 'system cache' are used with several different meanings.
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Postby L3th4l » Sun Jul 02, 2006 12:14 am

Do you mean the main system ram or the pagefile/swapfile?

For main system memory you can try a program like this:
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Util ... __Net.html
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Postby hika » Sun Jul 02, 2006 12:18 am

I don't know if it could help you.

http://www.winguides.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=genwinxp&Number=141807&page=1&view=expanded&sb=5&part=
Afer "googliing" a bit, this is the only link I could find.
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Postby torhu » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:11 am

Thanks, but there's no answer there either. No big deal, it's not like I need this badly.

L3th4l wrote:Do you mean the main system ram or the pagefile/swapfile?

Neither, I mean the file cache. When an app loads a file from disk, the OS caches it in memory. And when the app wants to load the same file again, the OS just hands it the data from the cache instead of reloading it from disk. That's why programs usually start a lot faster the second time you start them after a reboot. But you probably knew this.
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Postby L3th4l » Sun Jul 02, 2006 2:45 am

The file cache is held in the main system memory, so it would be the main system memory you want to clear. You do that by rebooting or using a memory cleaning program.. Your main memory is always flushed on reboot, the page file can be set to flush at reboot... If that's not what your looking for then I have no clue. There is only 2 types of memory in your system, your main memory (RAM) and the pagefile/HDD..
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Postby hika » Sun Jul 02, 2006 11:17 am

I'm not sure if file cache is done by the OS itself or an application like Explorer.exe .
I come to think like this, because of the link I have posted.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AlwaysUnloadDLL seems to be a specific key registry for Explorer.exe
I don't know either if this solution works or not.

Perhaps, one can try to kill Explorer.exe in order to reload this program, and BTW to possibly clear its file cache.
Ugly (potential) solution :D
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Postby torhu » Sun Jul 02, 2006 8:45 pm

The caching I'm talking about is done by the OS itself. I think a memory cleaning utility like the one Lethal suggested would do the trick.
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Postby sig11 » Tue Jul 04, 2006 8:38 pm

Or you could clear the cache the dirty way: write another program, that reads a huge dummy file. That should occupy the OS's file cache.
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Postby torhu » Tue Jul 04, 2006 11:36 pm

A bit too much trouble, I only wanted to see if the new Red Orchestra patch lowered the loading times. Which it seems to do.
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