XP Boot times: RESULT!

[Zak33]

Hi guys,

A few weeks ago I was whining on about XP boot times getting slower and slower as the install got older.

Well, today I'm installing XP on two WD drives (see other thread about HDD testing) and I've just had a EUREKA moment.

I am lucky enough to have recently purchased a SATA optical drive. I installed it months ago and it's very lovely.

Because I have lots ofspace in my aged tower case, I am still using my DVD/CD-R/CDRW combo drive too.

With fresh installs of XP and both optical drives connected I'm getting boot times of 46 and 45 seconds and 7 turns of the blue bar on the XP boot screen. Not bad.

But I unplugged all the drives to see the difference, leaving just the new WD drive.

under 1/2 a blue bar movement and a boot time of 35 seconds!

I plugged in 2 then 3 then 4 SATA drives and the boot times stay under 40 seconds AND less than 2 turns of the blue bar.

Plug in the EIDE drive......back to 47 seconds and 7 turns of the wheel.

What I'm saying is, with my Asus nForce4 mobo (A8N-E) EIDE slows it down, big time

Hope someone finds it useful as SATA opticals are under £20

[scrandman]

Great info!

Just annoys me even more that scan went out of stock when I ordered my SATA DVD-RW and I had to change it for an IDE one!!!!

[JimNastics]

Nice info Zak. I take it EIDE HDD's would have a similar effect? Still have 500gb on IDE...

[NightshadowUK]

So if I do something as simple as buy a SATA DVDRW drive to replace my IDE one... boot times should decrease? That's madness!

I must... resist...

[lanceuppercut]

nice info, but boot times? i just hibernate my machine

[moogle]

nice info, but boot times? i just hibernate my machine

slow shutting down and sometimes slow loading. plus restarts are needed sometimes. disk usually needs defragging more often with that

yep my boot time is 45 secs too, i have one cd drive plugged in although i never use it. the dvd drive is unpowered also. just ordered a sata dvdrw drive so that shud help

[Ciber]

That is useful to know, I have a sata dvdrw, so I'm thinking about taking all my IDE drives out. I haven't used my CDRW drive since it got the DVDRW and the other DVD drive I just use to keep the bf2142/ other game disc in to save putting it in every time I play, but I can live without that.

[badass]

Zak, have you tried using bootvis on your machine?
It may well hugely reduce the hit your machine gets on loading times for the IDE driver.

[Agent]

Bloody hell mate, ive been preaching this one for ages

IDE optical drives are really slow when initialising with windows. Strangely, other OS's don't suffer the same problem - or at least have a better way around it.

Bootvis will provide a good log of this

I found out when trying a serial-O2 that come with my NF7-S, purely on accident!

[nvening]

is it the same for vista? not that i use it, just intrested if its been fixed?

[Supershanks]

Good research, if only i had a spare sata port

[Agent]

Just unplug the optical

Who needs CD and DVD's anyway?

[Harkin]

I just installed a Sata Nec Optiarc DVD, it does seem quicker to load Windows although I havent timed it, just one complaint that the Nec sounds like Formula 1 car at the start of the GP, its really quick to read/load Dvd's but makes aheluva noise doing it. I think its something to do with the Optiarc whateva that is

[Supershanks]

Who needs CD and DVD's anyway?

sadly os & apps until they get put onto usb flash drives. Plus games tend to get pretty narcky if u don't have the original disc.

But other than that you've a point

[Harkin]

Well the worst is using those flippin floppies to load Raid drivers before Os install, especially when u go through 3 floppies cos they decided to go corrupt in a few minutes

[Supershanks]

how come that sata hd need drivers loaded ([f6]) so that the os can recognise the sata drives but sata cd/dvd doesn't?? Does the xp install see the cd