WinPrefetchView

WinPrefetchView is a small-sized and portable software utility that displays the Prefetch files installed on your system. This power user-geared tool puts at your disposal just a few simple, yet useful settings.

Since installation is not a requirement, you can drop the executable file anywhere on the hard disk and just click it to run. It is also possible to save WinPrefetchView to a USB flash disk or similar storage unit, in order to run it on any machine with minimum effort and no prior installers.

An important aspect to take into consideration is that Windows Registry does not get updated with new entries, and leftovers do not remain on the HDD after program removal.

At startup, WinPrefetchView immediately populates a list with system Prefetch files. The interface is represented by a regular window with a plain but intuitive layout.

This list shows the file name, date of creation and last modification, size, process EXE name, run counter, and last run time for each Prefetch item, along with the file name, full path, device path and index number for each file included in each Prefetch item.

You can make a selection and generate an HTML report with shown data, but not before customizing and resizing columns. Apart from HTML format, the tool offers support for TXT (regular, tab delimited, tabular text), CSV, HTML (horizontal or vertical) and XML. Other options of WinPrefetchView provide a search function when dealing with large amounts of data, display time in GMT, and let you modify the default Prefetch location.

We have not come across any issues in our tests, since the app did not hang, crash or pop up error dialogs. It uses low CPU and RAM, has a good response, and quickly exports data. When it comes down to it, WinPrefetchView offers a simple and effective means of viewing Prefetch files, and it should suit everyone's preferences.