increasing ram improves start/boot up times

Right now i have 1g ram. Will upgrading to 2g improve start up times...I already know about tweaking the system and stuff like that....That's not what i am concern about..

Its just a random question that popped into my head...So will it?? Maybe a little??

 

Hard drive speed has the biggest effect on boot times.

 

I am pretty sure only the hard drive affects your boot up time. Although I could be wrong...
Tim

 

I just upgraded my ram yesterday, and boot up seems the same, that's why I wasn't took sure if Windows recognized the ram or not. So I started to open programs and noticed that those ran faster, I checked system propertise to see if Windows recognize and it did. So what ZaZ and Tim are telling you about the hard drive affecting the boot up must be true.

 

When I upgraded RAM in both my computer, one from 256mb to 768mb and the other from 128mb to 512mb, it about halved mt boot up time on both machines. When I jumped from 2gb to 4gb on my work machine, there was no difference that I noticed. All machines are running WinXP except for my work machine, that is XP 64bit. Just so everyone knows, never run 128mb RAM on a computer w/ XP at all costs.

 

XP should be run on 512MB minimum. That is my opinion. The boot time increase when upgrading from a small amount of ram to a much larger amount stems from the fact that the computer isn't swapping to the drive so much than it did before. When jumping from 2GB to 4GB it was never an issue so there wouldn't of been much of a change there.

 

Yeah, I learned that the hard way, bought a $200 Frys computer that had 128mb RAM, and it took 5-9min to boot to the desktop, and it was fun to watch paint lag. I was lucky that I had lots of extra RAM cards lying around, so I put 2x 256mb card and it worked great, that and add an ATI 9550 256mb card.

 

I doubt it'll make a difference. As said above, if you go from tiny amounts of RAM (128-256MB) to something "sensible" (1GB or so), it makes a big difference.

But if you already have 512 or more, Windows won't run out of RAM during boot, and so there's nothing to be gained. (Other than maybe a few percent here and there)

 

Upgrading from 1gb to 2gb won't give you any significant boost when booting. Your computer will be as fast as the slowest component in it, i.e. the hard disk. Upgrading to a faster RPM HD say 7200RPM on the other hand will make your comp fly

 

Thank you all for the replies...

My hard drive is already a 7200rpm. Unless there is a SATA notebook 2.5 "raptor" 10000rpm in the making...im stuck with 7200rpm..

THe reason why i asked is because i see some people with some outstanding boot times.. Some as low as 20 secs!!! I really think thats not possible...RIght now i have all the regular tuneups i.e; registry, startup programs ( I have 2 start programs: Antivirus and RunDll )..Other than that, there is really nothing else that i can do to cut the times drastically...Some of the so called tweaks are not even worth it because they cut the times by 1/10 of a sec, if that...

Oh my boot time is anywhere from 55 - 60 secs..I really dont have a lot of programs installed...I wonder what the hell is dragging this thing..its driving me nuts

 

i upgraded my hard disk to 7200rpm and speed increased like crazy

RAM allows you to run more aplications at the same time and therefore your system is more stable

 

Eh who cares about boot time as long as it is reasonable. What can't wait an extra few second. I wouldnt worry about it.

 

Yeah it doesn't help when you already have 1gig of ram. But if you have 128 or 256 then it does help when starting services / programs when xp boots up. 7200rpm sata disk for laptop is fairly quick already. Nothing much you can do to improve the load time.

There are some people who loads xp into RAM and apparently that is extremely fast takes 5-10 secs. But it is only for testing purposes.

On my desktop I have my main OS on the SATA drive so it boots faster and my usual programs / games on another SATA. Then I have another 2 IDE drive for storage which does not require fast read / write.

 

And no one can do what I do, just leave it on all the time, and only put it into standby, restarting every once and a while??? Then my boot time is how long it takes to lift the screen.

 

This is a different case.
128mb to 512mb and 256mb to 768mb is a 'big' jump.
I mean 256mb is the least to make XP run smoothly.
When you install more and more apps..
The RAM needs will also grow..
This is why 512mb is recomendded..
Upgrade beyond 512mb,
won't affect the bootup significantly.
Why?
Coz the startup programs have their RAM supplied already (256-512mb)

Hope this helps

 

If you want it to boot up quicker you could try TuneXP and select option "ultra fast booting (rearrange boot files).

 

Like I said in that post you read, I turned off a lot of services I didn't need that most common users do---for example, the Print Spooler. I am also somewhat fanatical about combing my system and tuning it to keep it in tip top shape, and I admit I have gotten my hands dirty in the Registry for no apparent reason. You can search around the web for a guide or PM me if you need some pointers, but I don't recommend this type of tuning because it is very easy to disable an essential service and lose the ability to start Windows.

 

I am running the TuneXP utility for faster boot...It opened a Dos window with defrag.exe...

Is it going to close by itself once it's done..or I need to close it..This is what I see in it now:


Windows Disk Defragmenter
Copyright (c) 2001 Microsoft Corp. and Executive Software International, Inc.

Analysis Report

Volume size = 90.12 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 15.20 GB
Free space = 74.92 GB
Percent free space = 83 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 19 %
File fragmentation = 39 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 41,474
Average file size = 457 KB
Total fragmented files = 3,411
Total excess fragments = 12,504
Average fragments per file = 1.30

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 1.41 GB
Total fragments = 1

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 3,248
Fragmented folders = 74
Excess folder fragments = 516

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 44 MB
MFT record count = 44,831
Percent MFT in use = 99
Total MFT fragments = 3


Thanks

 

It's probably running a script using WMI's built in classes to analyze and defrag your primary HDD. Which means, do not do anything until the window closes itself. In fact, try not to surf or otherwise exercise your HDD until the task is done.