Who has the fastest booting x220?

Plugged in, mine boots to the desktop in 35 seconds. This includes the time at the bios screen. I login via fingerprint at the welcome screen. Rapidboot is off. My SSD is the Intel 310 mSata.

I'd like to get under 20 seconds. Has anyone achieved this? If so, how?

 

Mine used to boot in ~16 seconds from the moment I press the button until the desktop loads. That was at ~75% full on a 40GB Intel 310. Now that it's been through 6 months of wear and tear at 80% full, it takes about ~18-20 seconds to boot.

I didn't do anything special, just a clean install of Windows 7 professional and the essential Thinkpad drivers (no bloatware).

 

How do you login? I've noticed windows tends to reach the desktop about 5-10 seconds faster if it doesn't need to stop at the welcome screen for a password. This is true even it takes half a second to type the password.

 

Assuming you still want your account to have a password, you can bypass the initial login screen by opening a Run dialog box and entering "netplwiz". From there, click on your account and uncheck the box that says "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer".

 

If you're not using TPM you can disable it in the BIOS. That'll shave about five seconds off your boot time. Mine comes in just under 20 seconds as you can see in the review linked in my signature.

 

My i5 with the 310 80gb boots in 24 seconds. From hitting the power button to active desktop... with typing in password. I assume it would be around 20 or a little less if I didn't have password protection.

 

Interesting thread -- I was contemplating a WindPad 110W, but decided to bite on a refurbished X220.

It's weird... My times were constantly 20-22 seconds at first. I had some TrackPoint freezing issues, but after re-installing the trackpoint and camera drivers, the boot time suddenly felt more like 14 seconds (power on to usable desktop). Of note, the Event Viewer still says 22 seconds, but the desktop feels instantly usable after the black fade from the welcome screen (that's why I think it's more like 14 seconds). I wonder how long the boot time will stay like this? I'm guessing I'll lose this the next time I install something from windows update... :-(

I also find it weird that, according to Lenovo's disclaimer, the T420s pre-configured with "Rapidboot extreme" is actually restricted to 32-bit Windows. If that's the case, that one can't be using UEFI, right?

For my setup, I'm booting UEFI-only with an Intel 320 SSD, but I don't have a fringerprint reader. I used netplwiz to skip entering my password. I have most drivers from Lenovo's website installed, but none of Lenovo's ThinkVantage software or on-screen controls. Some other programs are also installed (Adobe CS3 suite, MS Office, bunch of Citrix stuff, Camtasia, Skype, other video editing programs, etc), but nothing really heavy.

If only we X220 users could skip the ThinkPad logo screen through some kind of BIOS mod, could that put us in striking range of the T420s? Ehhh... I think I'd better calm down and just enjoy sleep/resume.

 

Just a few questions about boot time:

what is rapidboot? i see it in my program uninstallation list but cannot find the software?

Zaz - what's the TPM? how can I disable BIOS if i dont do TPM?

I currently have 128GB toshiba SSD from the factory, and no mSATA. Would boot time be faster if I put a mSATA on?

THanks!

 

Hi Gamekingr,

Lenovo's rapidboot software just seems to delay a few services, in hopes of reducing the boot time, but I think most people find that it doesn't work well. It's different from Lenovo's Rapidboot extreme, whch, to my knowledge, they've only released for the T420s with Windows 7 x32 and legacy boot (i.e. non-UEFI).

By TPM, I believe we mean the "Trusted Platform Module." Somewhere in the BIOS (after hitting F1 at the ThinkPad screen), there's an option to disable it.

I'll echo my agreement with previous posts -- I think the biggest difference to Win7's boot time depends on a combination of the drivers, prefetching, and whatever Windows does in the background to optimize the boot process. I don't think using mSATA over the standard SATA port will make a difference. From my experience, my boot time didn't improve until I used the machine for a few days (using only sleep/resume), after installing the drivers and all my preferred programs.

I think my results are similar to this one (although the video is a restart, not a cold boot).

 

I believe it's under security in the BIOS.