I’m calling myself an owner of an SSD for almost two years now and I stumbled across some articles discussing the using them under Windows 7. Most of them suggest disabling Superfetch, others also disabling the Disk Defragmenter.

While it makes sense to avoid both, from what I know Windows 7 by default has their services set on manual start, meaning they are not running until the user or some other program specifically require these and launch them. As Tom’s Hardware mentions, Windows 7 will disable Prefetching, Superfetch and ReadyBoost once detecting an SSD, so not action should be required really.

Rumors of system optimization by disabling settings and services have always been the foundation of many online discussions, xpy allows tweaking exactly those things with a few clicks. However, as always, you should know what you do when using xpy and don’t rely on rumors and smattering. It’s still the case that many users of my software choose all available settings, ignore the following warnings and later complain about their operating system working other than desired. So again, if you know you want a setting applied, a service disabled or even some files deleted, you will find xpy a useful tool.

I don’t suggest to SSD owners to disable Superfetch, Windows 7 does that by default but the service can still be launched. If you know you don’t ever need this service and don’t use another piece of software that does, feel free to disable Superfetch – or any other service or setting you know you don’t need. If you don’t know what you’re doing, if you rely on rumors and smattering, think twice before using xpy. You don’t want to put your cute hamster in your microwave and you don’t want to use that kitchen knife to hurt someone – there will be trouble.

Anyway, let’s go and download the new version already!

I’ve been tinkering around with the developer preview of Windows 8 lately. While I personally like the Metro look judging from the visuals only, I can imagine a lot of people will want to get rid off it. So, here’s a new version of xpy that does exactly that at one click.

Just before the weekend starts, I fixed some things in the 1.2 release. As usual, you can download the redistributable version in the download section. For the first time in ages, I also compiled special versions and monolingual builds, but in most cases (and to avoid confusion) you want to stick to the normal version.

For the last couple of years I maintained two versions of more or less the same programm: xpy and Vispa. Both were built from the same source-code and this allowed targeting each software to a specific version of Windows. On the downside this meant more administration and I don’t have the time for this anymore, especially since the building tool xpyle hasn’t been updated in years.

As of today, there won’t be two versions anymore. Vispa has merged into xpy and the program will determine which settings are suitable for the target OS. To be honest the detection might not be perfect yet, but there’s an extra layer avoiding any operations if the Windows version is not supported.

Seems the previous version was rushed off a little, it later turned out two of the labels weren’t localized. If you’re using xpy 1.1.3/Vispa 0.6.4 in English, you can easily skip this update. However, while I on a new version, I added a color indicator for the RDP port. Again no change in functionality, just improved the usability.