boot up times

[MKA]

I was just wondering what sort of boot up times people get on their PC's/laptops. I know it is dependent on many things, but somehow mine seems a bit slow with my specs. Just to add my CPU has been overclocked to 2454 mhz and a slight ram overclock to 205mhz. the OC has made no difference to my boot up time, for good or bad, just incase anyone asks.

Here is a breakdown of mine:

power button to windows bars = 20 seconds
windows bars = 16 seconds
From end of windows bars to XP welcome screen = 11 seconds
welcome screen to desktop = 6 seconds
desktop to everything loading = 25 seconds

thats roughly about 1 min 20 seconds. seems a bit slow to me. i used vista for a bit with the same hardware and had everything loading under a minute. I have an AMD dual processor so was wondering if it may be the MS hotfix i use? just a theory though. Another thing i read was that old nvidia ide drivers could be slowing down boot up, but i have updated to the newest ones and has made no difference. I have gone through msconfig as well and don't seem to have any unwanted things there. i have used imageshack to host a pic of my msconfig start up tab just incase i am wrong. lastly i regularly run anti virus and spyware checks.

Then again, I may just be an impatient git lol. Any idea's people?

[Fraz]

That's XP right? That does seem a bit slow, but it's hardly bad. Hmm, will have to time mine tonight, and get a comparison.

Which drive is it booting off? The 160GB or the 500GB? As you probably know, booting is normally I/O limited, rather than CPU limited, hence your CPU overclocking not making any difference. Windows is supposed to tune the booting from time to time, to make the best usage of resources... you can also do it manually with BootVis. I found it wasn't worth the bother, as it didn't make any difference for me, but it will give you a profile of what's taking the longest, etc.

If you use only SATA connections in your computer, then you'll definitely notice an improvement in the first stage if you disable all your PATA stuff in the BIOS.

Otherwise, maybe disable unused services in XP.
Also disable all unused stuff on your mobo in BIOS (e.g. floppy, eSata, firewire, if you never use them).

[MKA]

It is XP Fraz, and it is booting off the 500GB samsung one, i have tried both HDD's and it made no difference, that was my initial theory as to why it was a bit slow.

I`m a bit embarassed to say i don't know what the following means "booting in normally I/O limited, rather than CPU limited".

But I will go through my bios at some stage and see if i have unwanted services enabled. I think i have tried that but worth checking again.

Thanks for the reply Fraz been most helpful mate and given me some things to try.

[s_kinton]

I`m a bit embarassed to say i don't know what the following means "booting in normally I/O limited, rather than CPU limited".

Hes basically saying that the limiting factor when it comes to loading speed is the hard drive, not the CPU speed. Thats why your CPU overclock didnt reduce your boot time.

[Zak33]

i couldn't deal with that...woulds drive me mad.

When you hit Cntrl Aklt and Delete, how many processes (bottom left,,....be patient) show up?
A FAIRLY CLEAN INSTALL HAS BETWEEN 24 AND 28. A brand new Dell PC I used last week had 63!

To sort it:

Start, Run -> and they type msconfig

hit return

Then go to the Tab that says START UP

How many things are in there that you need? Google all the program names. You'll learn a lot. If you untick on and reboot you'll get a message, and you can click the box to not show the message any more. If something has stopped working.....run MSCONFIG again and retick it

Other thing to know is that SATA hdd and SATA optical drives make for fast boot times, and as soon as your add a PATA/EIDE optical or hdd drive in, on SME motherboards, it adds on lots of time.

[McMav]

How old an install of windows is it. The older the install the more shoite in the registry that will take longer to boot up.

[Fraz]

How many things are in there that you need? Google all the program names. You'll learn a lot. If you untick on and reboot you'll get a message, and you can click the box to not show the message any more. If something has stopped working.....run MSCONFIG again and retick it

If you look at the pic he's included, he's doing just that

[MKA]

looked through my bios, nothings enabled that shouldn't be. my optical drives are IDE but my HDD's are sata. i was thinking of getting the new sata optical drives, when finances permit though.

the windows install is a fresh one, only a few weeks old, and i regularly use CCleaner to clean up the rubbish which accumulates in my reg. and to answer zak33's question, i have about 48 processes running.

at the moment i am trying the different dual core fixes. have removed the ms hotfix and will try amd's dual core optimiser. probably have nothing at all to do with it but worth a try. if i can be bothered i`ll disable one piece of hardware at a time and see if i get any clues.

obviously this is not a major problem, just something thats been bugging me as to why it takes 1 min 20 seconds for everything to boot. if i find an answer i will post back my results.

thanks to the people who have replied and offered me advice, much appreciated

[Fraz]

Seriously, give BootVis a spin... just type BootVis into google, and you shouldn't have a problem finding a download. It should at least give you more of an idea as to what is taking so long. Realistically, you should be booting in about half that time.

[Fraz]

FYI: Just timed my system. Was about 40 seconds, and I imagine if I turned off BOINC from starting up 4 jobs running on the 4 cores it'd be a bit quicker.

[Kumagoro]

Are these fresh installs of windows? if they are then I dont think its a windows problem my 1 GHz PIII
boots up faster than that. If you haven't tried a fresh install then do it.

Have you tired removing as much hardware as possible? and disabling stuff in the bios. In the past
I have had a pc which ran noticably slow but not so slow that there was obviously something wrong.
My mobo was dodgy in that case.

[MKA]

Fraz: right, not really had much of a chance to investigate this further of late, it has been a hectic and tiring last few days. I will give bootvis a go, is it easy(ish) to understand and use and also to understand whatever results it gives me?

Kumagoro: hmmm I guess the motherboard could be the root of the problem, the XP install is quite new, as i said above only a few weeks old. I`ve not got around to disabling hardware one by one yet, not really had the time but along with bootvis they are my next things to do.

thanks again.

[MKA]

I just thought i'd post an update. I`ve not been methodical enough to be much use to other people who have had similar problems, but hopefully some will find what i say helpful.

Firstly i tried bootvis, but each time i tried a trace on start up i would be told bootvis encountered an error. Not sure what was going on there.

I decided to try a fresh install of XP even though my last install was only a few weeks old.

I did certain things different however.

Firstly I never installed my realtek97 drivers, i used the Nvidia sound drivers instead.

I have not installed an MS hotfix or the dual core optimiser for my CPU's (yet).

I am no longer using AVG but AVAST free instead.

Along the way I`m pretty sure i did things generally a bit different than i normally do after a format, for example install the drivers in a different order to what i normally do.

I`m not sure how i did this, i messed about quite a bit with my user accounts as well, now, i do not get the welcome screen in big letters when windows starts up but instead just a little window, saying loading personal settings or something. I may have to double check the accuracy of that.

However the main point is that my start up has been improved by about 20 seconds. Booting up the PC for the first time in the day will now take roughly 1 minute, before it was 1 min 20 seconds, a restart is about 10 seconds quicker than that so about 50 seconds.

The area of the boot up which has improved is the final stages when XP is loading my desktop and my personal settings. There still seems to be a delay after Post and before the windows bars. Plus the windows bars will go across about 9 times before moving on to the next part of the start up.

I`m not sure exactly what i have learnt from my efforts, but for now my boot up has got much better.