Windows 7 is slow

Updated to windows 7 on my FW and it's definitely slower at booting up than vista. Vista was probably under 50 seconds and it was fully usable after these 50 seconds. Now, in windows 7 it takes over 2 minutes for it to be fully usable. Anybody else find windows 7 slow? Any solutions?

 

I definitely don't find it slow but at the same time, I don't find it "snappier" than Vista. I had a pretty clean copy of Vista on my FW so switching to a clean version of 7 wasn't that much of a difference but I DO like 7 a lot more, especially with the eyecandy.

One scary thing I noticed is that if I don't let 7 load up for a bit and put in my password immediately and log in, my desktop doesn't load... it's actually quite scary. First it says, "Preparing your desktop" ..One time, the classic windows theme would display and I got the error message saying "explorer.exe" couldn't load, the second time it logged me into a temporary account and I got a message saying that my account couldn't be loaded and any files saved on the temporary account would be deleted when logged off. I'll try to get a screenshot next time.

This stuff can easily be fixed by logging off and logging in again.

 

sounds like you have a driver issue. Locate the correct Storage Controller Driver and test that out.

I remember using the default windows SATA controller driver and it would take about 2 min to load up, then i installed the correct manufacturer's driver, and it decreased it down to like 30-45sec.

 

You might try a boot file defrag. See my signature line for details.

Gary

 

I'll second the boot defrag - trimmed 15-20 seconds off my boot time. But do as his instructions say, start it and leave it alone till done. Then found MyDefrag (free application) and running that made windows 7 nicely responsive.

 

Another thing if you're looking for quick boot times and program loads is take the power management off "balanced". I've tried both an you really don't loose that much more battery on performance, but it sure does make things SOOOO much snappier.

 

Did you upgrade doing a clean install as recommended or did you do it the wrong way?

 

somethin isnt right. My fw is blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing fast. Way faster than Vista was. I will say that when i "upgraded" my wife's Z to windows 7 from vista it was considerably slower than vista. The boot time almost doubled. Did a clean install and the boot time is faster than vista.

 

Yeah. I did the clean install. Don't really know what is wrong.

 

How could that possibly help? "Balanced" only throttles back the CPU when it is not being used, when the CPU is being used it immediately runs at full speed. "Performance" keeps it at full speed all the time. All measured tests reported to date indicate there is NO benefit from the "performance" mode at all. There is an entire thread elsewhere on this forum dedicated to this very discussion.

Gary

 

I agree. It defintely seems slower to load then with Vista on my FW490. I did the upgrade. maybe I should have done a clean install.

 

I'll ask you the same question. Have you defragged the bootfiles yet?

Gary

 

I guess I did it the wrong way, if the wrong way is choosing the upgrade from Vista 64 bit. I just felt that it would be a major pain to do a clean install (which I did on my desktop PC which had been running the release candiate of Windows 7.)

 

There are lots of folks who did the upgrade instead of a clean install and are having no issues at all. So in that regard there is no "right" way.

Gary

 

I defragged the bootfiles. It took about an hour for the command line to disappear. It still took approx 2 minutes and 40 seconds for windows 7 to completely load to the point where I had wireless access. It also takes a very long time to initially start up Internet Explorer. I've reduced my startup items to the minimum, but it still seems very slow to load.

 

I just defragged the bootfiles and there was a slight improvement. But, not anything major. Probably because it was only 9% fragmented.

 

It's not so much the fragmentation elimnation that this trick does as it is the re-ordering of the files that gives the most benefit. But it sounds like yours were already optimized. I gained about 15 seconds after my Win7 upgrade.

If you update drivers or ad new startup apps or services you might want to do this again latter.

Gary

 

That does seem quite long. Do you happen to have any mapped network drives?

Gary

 

What is a mapped network drive? I was able to get the load time down by another 20 seconds or so by changing timeout from 30 seconds to 3 seconds in the msconfig/boot options. I also read earlier that I could change the number of processors from 1 to 2 in the msconfig section. I did that as well, but startup is still over 2 minutes.

 

Are you doing a full shut down and re-start when you are leaving/coming back to the laptop?
Try using hibernate (not standby) and you will see that booting time will decrease and you do not have to close your programs you are working on next time.

 

I only do a full shut down if I don't plan to be on the laptop for several hours.

 

Then you should also use hibernate unless you really need to restart (eg due to updates). Win7 has a good memory management and wont become slower after some time w/o rebooting. Thats what I can say from my experience.

Or do you say that your booting time from hibernate lasts long, too?

 

It is a folder elsewhere on a network that has been assigned a drive letter on the local machine. Changing the number of processors is an urban myth. It does absoultely NOTHING, since Windows uses all available processor cores anyway by default. (That option is there to REDUCE the number of cores for testing purposes.)

There is a performance diagnostic log/screen that can help identify what component is slowing down the boot process. I don't remember off hand how to display it, but if you Google it I am sure you should be able to find it.

Gary

 

Just so someone stumbling into this thread doesn't get confused by the terminology, there is technically no such thing as "boot time from hibernation". There is startup time or wakeup time but not "boot time". Boot time is only defined as the time for a complete OS restart. (Yes I know that is picking nits, but if not used consistently the terminology can make for very confusing threads for folks new to this stuff.)

Gary

 

Its only booting from a startup which seems slow.

 

What about the drivers? One person on this thread said that they could be causing the problem. How can we check this?

 

Two places:
1. If have driver problems or other issues WIN 7 will have a message for you in the "Action Center" - look for a small flag in your task bar (right hand corner) - if there is an issue it will show up there (was missing one of my drivers after a clean install and it suggested the fix).
2. Control Panel - Device manager and look for any yellow "!" marks.

Have you tried an overall system defrag - at first mine was sluggish, used Gary's boot defrag, then a full defrag with a free utility called MyDefrag, Computer is fast and responsive - much snappier than with Vista.