Request: A list of EVERYTHING you can do to have super fast boot times

I am really wondering if I could get any better boot times off of my laptop,which I am getting about 33 seconds between power button and wallpaper, which is about 40 before my wireless shows that its connected and ready to go. My main issue though,is that my BIOS takes forever to load, around 12 seconds between power button and my BIOS logo going away,which is annoying because theres nothing I can really do about it. Anyway,heres my list-

1. HDD is first boot device
2. no GUI boot
3. 2 Processors in msconfig
4. Windows set to mostly "Performance" settings except for still being able to use Aero and transparent windows
5. Limited startup apps, mostly just driver related,OSD for my shortcut keys on my keyboard. Not using Lenovo power or wireless managers though. But am using ATI CCC.
6. Stopped some services, but I dont think this had much of an impact. There wasnt much I wanted to disable that was turned on, except for Indexing.

What does seem a little vauge, is whether or not changing prefetch/superfetch has any impact, havent really messed with it,some sites say changing it helps,other sites say changing it is a bad idea, so I dont really know.

I forget what it was called,but I installed this one analyzer tool from Microsoft that apparently reconfigures how your drivers load on startup,and rearranges them in a certain order to increase performance. It restarts like 6 times as it tries to figure it out. I am not sure what it was called, or what it really does though.

I also dont know if I could any other available driver with my Momentus XT, everyone says to use the Intel Matrix storage driver,but something tells me that probably wont work on something AMD powered,so I never bothered to try it. Dont know what really to do or not to do to increase the performance of my XT, so any suggesting for that might help.

Anyway,maybe someone could help out with some specific settings or whatnot, but I am also requesting that someone could write a general in-depth guide on advanced things to do to speed up boot times. I've read some lists on some sites,but I think there can be some more in-depth things that most sites dont list (or list all in one guide perhaps),notably the bit about rearranging the drivers to boot faster.

 

its not that important,its more like a hobbyist project than anything.

I work at a computer shop, so its more like a "hey guys,look how fast my laptop boots!" type of deal.

As far as removing the splash screen, my laptop displays like these 6 1x3 blue pixel bars at the top left corner of my screen for 2-3 seconds,so theres still an indicator there,its just not as obvious.

I am wondering,even if it dosent change the amount of overall time it takes to boot,is there a way (in Windows 7) to remove the "Welcome" screen that comes up for like 3-4 seconds? My goal,is to Hit the power button,wait a few seconds, see the Thinkpad BIOS logo,wait some more time while looking at the black screen then see my desktop come up with nothing inbetween. I dont want to see any loading screen, just blackness then desktop. It would add to the minimalist theme im going for in my laptop.

 

vlite your installation of windows 7 to remove services that you don't use.

use raid0 sandforce SSDs as your boot drive

overclock your cpu

 

If you want to shave off some serious time get an SSD.

 

Correct Windows 7 will initialise all the Core during boot.
This function was intended to troubleshoot non functioning cores.

Correct, in affect performance mode is the same as balance mode because the Processor is able to set up and down the multiplier dynamically based on system load.

I wouldn't actually touch service because some services actually depends on others to start before they can start usually you can leave services out.

If you ask me the way to optimize
1)Leave the computer on (no suspend) for 1 day for it to optimize itself
Or you can manually initiate the command

Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
Using Command Prompt with elevated permission
This function is documented in the Windows Hardware Developers Documentation

2)Defrag the boot files
defrag C:\ /b /v /u
Using Command Prompt with elevated permission

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I was actually talking about disabling the eye candy in windows explorer to "performance" over "appearance".

Thanks for the other commands tho, it should help.

But heres a question, would there be a need to defrag the boot files on a Momentus XT?

 

That is a good question but because it is a hybrid type of drive I can't answer that.

 

OC the CPU, use an SSD, remove services, remove startup apps are pretty much all I can think of - some of the other stuff the OP listed will do little to nothing at all

 

See if your computer mfr. has a BIOS update available to download.

 

I use Hibernate most of the time. Only restart if updates or an install requires to do so.

 

Maximum PC had an article about this in their March 2010 issue.

In Search of the Sub-30 Second Boot | Maximum PC

 

Using and SSD will cut your boot times to about half compared with a standard HDD... good start.

 

The XT is still a hard drive with spinning platters. After a while stuff will get fragmented, so the occasional defrag would be beneficial.

 

I thought that the best way was to put your OS on the fastest part of HDD, by creating a small separate partition on the outer edge of HDD.

But no one mentioned it here.

 

Use a bios editor to enable Quickboot mode to shave some time off that initial 12seconds. Eg: ezh2o for Insyde BIOS.

 

That's because everyone's moved beyond spinning HDDs, placing the OS anywhere on a SSD is faster than the outer edge of even a velociraptor 10k rpm hdd.

 

If you meant short stroking, wouldn't it be on the inner edge?

 

I see where the OP is coming from I too have to wait ages before I even get the bios logo. It seems to be checking the BD rom before it movies on even though HDD is first boot device. I would say wait is somewhere around 15 secs. Perhaps because I have IDE ATA interface rather than sata for the drive it takes so long

 

Welcome to the future UEFI the successor to the BIOS, boot your PC in seconds.

BBC News - Change to 'Bios' will make for PCs that boot in seconds

 

Guys don't buy into rubbish articles like this.
This is the real article with regards to UEFI.
If it boots fast it is because developers optimized the boot routines and skip certain hardware tests and delays.

 

It is difficult man, it is all hex...reversing hex is difficult...If you can enlighten us on how to do it I will be eternally grateful.

 

ezh2o opens the bios file and provides a menu with items otherwise not shown in the bios. Quickboot being one of them. <strike>Works if you have Insyde bios.</strike> Works for some Insyde bios versions.

 

Only works for certain .fd files of certain laptop models well at least for the EzH20 version that I have. For my EFI Firmware for my laptop it just hangs.
Doesn't work for Acer Insyde Firmware for the EzH20 that I have it just hangs, unless you have a newer version that is...

 

does anyone know if I can hack the BIOS in my laptop like that?

 

I clean installed Windows 7 (start up with about 50 processes) - 3 years old Lenovo X200 with P8600 C2D, 2GB RAM (8GB SSD ExpressCard on the way - will use it as RAM via ReadyBoost). it boots in 15 seconds and shuts down in 5 seconds.

It boots all drivers, aero, Windows logo, Power Manager, Active Protection System, etc.