How to Disable Superfetch on Windows 10

Superfetch (now known as SysMain in newer Windows 10 updates) is a background service designed to speed up app launching by preloading frequently used apps into memory. While it sounds helpful, it can sometimes do more harm than good—especially if you’re experiencing high disk usage, slow startup times, or performance issues.

Here’s a quick guide to disabling Superfetch (SysMain) on Windows 10.

Why Disable Superfetch?

Superfetch is supposed to make your system faster, but in some cases, it has the opposite effect. Common complaints include:

• Constant high disk usage (often pegged at 100%)
• Sluggish performance on older PCs or systems with limited RAM
• Unwanted background activity when gaming or editing

Disabling Superfetch doesn’t harm your system. If anything, it’s a useful troubleshooting step to rule out disk bottlenecks.

Method 1: Disable Superfetch via Services

1. Press Windows + R to open the Run dialog.
2. Type services.msc and press Enter.
3. In the Services window, scroll down to “SysMain”.
4. Right-click on “SysMain” and select Properties.
5. Under Startup type, choose Disabled from the dropdown.
6. Click Stop to halt the service immediately, then hit Apply and OK.

Method 2: Disable Superfetch via Registry Editor

⚠️ Caution: Editing the registry can cause problems if done incorrectly. Make sure to back it up first.

1. Press Windows + R, type regedit, and press Enter.
2. Navigate to:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
3. Look for a key called EnableSuperfetch.
   If it doesn’t exist, right-click on the right panel → New > DWORD (32-bit) Value → Name it EnableSuperfetch.
4. Double-click it and set its value to:
   • 0 to disable Superfetch
   • 1 for boot files only
   • 2 for apps only
   • 3 to enable for both (default)
5. Set it to 0 and click OK.
6. Restart your computer.

Method 3: Disable Superfetch Using Command Prompt

1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator.
2. Run the following command: sc stop "SysMain" & sc config "SysMain" start=disabled

This stops the service and prevents it from starting again at boot.

Final Thoughts

Disabling Superfetch can improve performance, especially on systems with HDDs or limited resources. If you notice no improvement or miss the feature, it’s easy to re-enable it using the same steps above—just switch the settings back.

Let me know in the comments if this helped, or if you’ve found other tricks to speed up Windows 10!