Tips/Tricks/Reccommendations to Decrease Start-up Time?

Hi everyone. I'm looking to learn all the things I can do to decrease the time from when I push the power button to when I can actually use my computer.

How I measure this is the time from when I push the power button to when the desktop shows up and when FireFox opens (I have to click the icon.) Right now, I'm at avg. 55 sec. for desktop to show-up and another 35 sec. after that for FF to launch. This is a total of avg 90 sec. from power button push to internet connectivity.

I've read where folks can get launches in half this time. I'd love to be able to do this, but any significant improvement is welcome. I know my time is not THAT BAD, but it's kind of become a challenge to see how fast I can get it.

So far, I've downloaded and ran CCleaner several times and Defragmentation with the Windows utility and then 2 more times with Defraggler (I heard it works better than the stock program in Windows). The results have made the overall window-opening, etc, faster, but not the start-up.

What else do you recommend? Feel free to post your own speed, preferably measured the same way I measure mine (to keep things in the same perspective).

I'm running Windows Vista, 32-bit, 360GB harddrive, 3GB ram, 2Ghz processor.

I also have a BootSkin, which is a picture that displays in place of the windows loading bar, and an animated 3D desktop background.

Sorry for the long-winded post and thanks for your help with my goal.

 

In my signature line is a link to a thread here on how to specifically defragment and re-arrange the boot files. The built in defrag of Windows has this as an option and Vista and Win7 are both setup to automatically do this. However the usage mode for most laptops prevents this from ever happening. This is also explained in the thread.

There is also another thread elsewhere in this forum that talks about some Microsoft provided utility that will analyze the startup processs. I don't have a link for that thread though.
Gary

 

+1 to scuderiaconchliglias boot files, would have been what i linked to.

and in your case, i guess firefox reinstallation and recreating of the profile might help, too. a good modern firefox installation should not take more than some seconds.

on vista, i remember firefox booting much faster if superfetch got delayed / disabled. nothing i support, but worth for a try at least.

 

Disable services/ startup programs that you don't need or use.

edit: Also, I used to have a 5.4kRPM drive and 4GB of RAM and I used to boot up in 48 seconds. After tweaking and doing what ScuderiaConchiglia has suggested I got down to around 24 seconds.

 

Go for an SSD if you afford, this would speed up things (a lot) in general. Don't go crazy about disabling start-up processes and services since you would pay for it when it comes to related apps during the day. What you don't need is not always the same as what the system needs to give you an overall performance.

cheers ...

 

This: http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...ed-up-windows-boot-time-hdd-not-msconfig.html

 

How would you guys compare this method above with ScuderiaConchiglia's ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...files-under-win7-post5459182.html#post5459182)


I haven't tried neither yet. Should I try both or just one of them? Which?

 

That was the other thread I mentioned but didn't have a link for. My method just invokes the special option built into Windows native defrag. to reorder the boot files based on the log that windows keeps as it boots up. This other method would appear to take a more analytical approach. I don't know which is better, but would think this one would be.

I'd love to see someone clone their C: drive, use my method. Time the bootup. Restore the cloned image, use this method and time the bootup. Then compare the two. Now realize that even if you did this experiment, it might not show ANY difference at all, if your bootfiles were already optimized.

Gary

 

And how about using PerfectDisk to defragment Boot? Wouldn't that do the same or even better!?

 

You can also open the CMD prompt as an admin and type "defrag -b C:" without the quotes to defrag the boot files (Gary's batch file does the same after making the system idle).

 

There is no such thing called "better boot file defragmentation". All the 3rd party software's features are just marketing gimmicks.

 

Tried this...

Gary's method gave a boot time that was 3.8 seconds faster than the other one...

PS., I've always used Gary's method though, right from when I was on Vista..

 

I don't know if it has that option.

Gary

I do think you need to do BOTH steps in my batch file. The first one makes the system THINK it is idle. That allows task manager to kick off a process that is waiting for the system to be idle. As I understand it, that process takes the logs the the OS creates about the boot files and preps a list of the proper order. The defrag command then uses that list to do its magic. Now, if you configuration hasn't changed you might very well be able to skip that first step.

Gary

 

So I asked this in another thread but nobody seemed to answer but I have an Alienware and wanted to know which of these programs I could disable upon startup:
I have these programs on startup and wanted to know which of these I could disable:
AlienFX Controller
FATrayAlert
FAStartup
SysTrayApp (A program from IDT I believe?)
Thanks

 

disable them, see what you're missing, re-enable as needed.

 

Yes it does This is what I use on regular basis and quite happy with...

 

Thanks a lot for the replies everyone!

I've heard that an SSD would increase mys speeds, but haven't got one.

I'm going to try the 2 methods that were mentioned here and see how it goes. Thanks for the advice

 

If you can't afford a SSD I'd suggest a Hybrid drive. My boot up time is now 20 seconds and I haven't bothered disabling services etc.

 

Since you plan to try both methods, do you have any way you can image the drive before you start, so you can try both methods using a drive in EXACTLY the same state both times?

Gary

 

I wonder how often do you cold-start your pc that boot time is so important to you? I mean it is worth tweaking it a bit if you can and as long as it only costs a few minutes every now and then but otherwise...?

I re-(start) my laptop ~ 1/Week if not even more rarely... and while it is cool to have it start as fast as possible, I don't care much for those extra 20 or 40 seconds per week that much As a matter of fact you loose more time defragmenting on regular basis than you win out of faster booting...

Why don't you use sleeping/hibernating...?

 

I agree Gracy! Honestly, boot time isn't a huge deal for me. As long as it's "quick enough" I don't mind.

I try not to reboot often because I don't want my boot files to be cached, I'd much rather it go towards opening Chrome or Digsby.

I do disgaree, however, that you lose more time defragmenting over booting up. Booting up means you're sitting at the computer trying to get somethin gdone (usually) but you can easily defrag overnight when you aren't doing anything at all. Yes you might save more "hypothetical" time by just not defragging and instead booting up but logically you save time.

Hope I wasn't too unclear lol it's late.

 

When U say in another thread was it in the AW forum here?
I found this thread , hope it helps
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m15x/490017-any-bloatware-uninstall-2.html

The standard advice is to do a clean install of your operating system. There are excellent guides in the aforementioned section of NBR.

 

This is a quite peddling calculation however as the boot-defragmentation requires a restart to be efficient (at least this is how Perfectdisk does it), so you can't do it in the background neither does scheduling make much sense... So it is pretty much an "on demand" defragmentation which even if you go and walk your dog in the meantime or brush your teeth - still requires attention to think about when to run it and so on...

I mean I still do it every now and then whenever I have nothing to do, but it is actually investing time to win time but nobody knows whether you win or loose under the line
Especially with restarting once a week or as some people - once a month.... it is rather just a more useful alternative of Solitaire

While I don't want to underestimate clean-installing the OS, I still get my 30-40 sec. boot-time incl. my 4 gadgets and so on with an OEM OS (cleaned up afterwords).

 

The boot defrag will reboot on its own =p you don't need to do anything.

You can also read a book or whatever while it's going on. My point is that even if you spend 5 hours just to gain 10 seconds of boot time it's still worth it because you observe boot time more often.

 

Yes I know, but you need to trigger it, don't you And remember this is not a one-time-deal, if you want to keep your boot times short you need to run that on regular basis. So the question is - how many defragmentations do you perform for how many boots. If you defragment once a month and it takes about 15 minutes to do so and you win 15 seconds off your boot-time this way, you need to re-start over 60 times per month to win those 15 minutes back
Again - I'm not against boot-defragmenting, I do it myself too. I am just saying it actually makes less sense at the end of the road

It is a bit like all those telecommunication offers with "free" minutes - sign a contract to pay 20€ a month and you get 100 "free" minutes... My math says those 100 minutes cost 0,20 € each, don't they

 

My point is that you don't lose any time defragging if you do it during a time when you wouldn't be using your computer. So hypothetically you lose 15 minutes but if you run it in your sleep (start it, go to sleep, wake up and it's done) or if you simply run it and then go take a shower/ have dinner... those 15 minutes mean nothing to you.

Whereas when you boot up you're probably waiting for the computer/ you want to use the computer.

I boot defragged once after I got all of my main programs installed and that'll probably be the only time I do it for a long time. Defragging wipes the 4GB nand on my HDD.

 

Again - this is all too subjective and as you can see based on many "if"s Leave it overnight - 8h on-time for 15 min job....? Awesome Very energy, technically and environmentally efficient

Running it only once doesn't bring much - the effect vanishes with time, so you need to do it on regular basis for those extra 10 or 15 seconds a week and again "if", "if", "if"

 

I've analyzed my drive. It isn't fragmented so there's nothing to worry about for me, I boot up in 15 seconds and I'm fairly certain that's because of the SSD, which won't get fragmented anyways.

Sleeping was one way, you can always take a shower or grab dinner. My point is that if it's 15 minutes that you have free and you don't need your computer you can spend that time defragging. If you're turning the computer on you're probably looking to use it ASAP.

 

Well reading how many performance issues the Momentus XT has, you probably loose X times those extra 20 seconds along the day The concept about the drive is quite good, but many people wouldn't call it a full success.
I myself was very disappointed from Momentus when I was using one and from Seagate generally as I had another 7200 Seagate drive too.

But this is a different topic I'm just saying how easy the balance can be tipped to the other direction when talking about seconds and milliseconds

 

Haven't had any performance issues. The only ones I'd heard of were in macs/ were with faulty drives. 15 second boot up on the second one. 20 seconds normally. Perhaps you were still on S23, which had lots of problems. We're on 25 now. Were you on the XT or just the regular momentus?

I see your point I just disagree. When I boot defragged I didn't sit at the computer waiting for it to finish but when I wake up in the morning I want the laptop to start ASAP. Therefor I'm willing to let the boot defrag run in the background while I use my CR48 to watch TV or go eat dinner because it'll shave off a second or two next time I need to get on.

 

great thread...bookmarked

 

Both actually Very disappointed from both, don't know which version though. And many threads here stating the same even about 25... But that's a different topic.

You can use that sleep feature you know on for 1-2 sec

 

Haven't seen those threads. But I wouldn't be surprised. It's a new idea. All I know is that I'm getting excellent results and benchmarks have improved.

As for sleep, I prefer to turn the laptop all the way off. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I feel that it's good to give computers a break.

 

...yes... you are in fact old-fashioned
Well if you do that you definitely should boot-defrag Thus you lose much more time starting all your programs/browsers/documents etc. to continue working (compared to putting it to sleep) than you gain from faster booting

As I said I shut-down/restart probably once every 10 days

About sleeping - I do it now with my current laptop. I used to leave my previous one on almost 24h

Whenever I transport it I hibernate, which can be even slower to wake from than cold-start (especially with more RAM), but I have everything ready to continue working so in this manner I am saving a lot of time - much more than faster booting

As I said - a VERY tricky calculation all of this

 

I don't mind shutting down/ starting up. It takes 15-20 seconds so it's not a big deal. Like I said, I have checked defragmentation and there is none so far, definitely none that would effect performance.

When you sleep I assume your hard drive is still spinning? Or some parts are still on... I'd rather that not be the case. No heat and no moving parts = longer lasting computer.

 

He??? There is ABSOLUTELY nothing moving when on "sleep"!! Have you NEVER used it!?

It is only that your RAM is still powered to keep the data. That's all - no FAN, no HDD spinning - nothing!

Dude, you are in fact "quite" an old-timer When was sleeping first introduced? Windows 95 I think (standby).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_mode

I know only one laptop model where the FAN would still go on, even in sleep mode, but that was/is a bug.

 

I've used sleep but I see no reason to for long periods of time. Why leave your RAM on? Why leave anything on, really? It just seems like you'd be leaving things open. I can wait 15 seconds to boot up if there's a chance that it'll give my RAM some time away from heat.

 

What about Puran Defrag's boot defrag?

 

Because:

1. 15 sec (or your boot time whatever it may be) is misleading! You need another minute or so to open all your document, browsers, programs and everything you were working on - for an advanced user or multi-tasker like me it takes up to or over 5 minutes to restore my workspace!!
Sleep mode for instance restores everything in less than 2 seconds and I can continue working from where I left off! That's the whole concept and that's why so many people use it nowadays.

2. RAM is cheap, has the X times the lifetime of your computer and is usually offered with a lifetime warranty.

It is just the wrong thing to be worried about. I could even imagine that cold-starting could be of greater damage to the system than waking up - RAM is being erased every time you shut-down and filled again every time you start. So in fact many more cycles. HDD is also working hard to load everything, instead of just continue working pretty much in idle when you wake up.

Again - easy to tip the balance It is just the wrong thing to be worried about

From my experience I would advise:

* Use sleep when not using it at home (overnights, out of home, etc.)
* Use hibernating when transporting (it is safer and consumes no power)
* Shut down when not going to use for longer periods of time - a few days/weeks etc.

 

5 minutes? o_o? I'm using boottimer.exe, which waits for all services to hit idle before it counts the boot time. That's 15 seconds including how long it takes for all of my startup programs to finish/ idle. Chrome is... 3 seconds tops on a cold boot.

I'll look into keeping it in sleep mode but until then... gonna stick to the same way I always have.

 

You're a VERY light user then, that's all

This is my "light" usage (just shot):



How much time do you think it costs me to recover that every morning if I were to shut down And that is just my "light" usage scenario. Not to mention Virtual machines, QXDM, Photoshop, etc. etc.

That's what sleep-mode was invented for

 

I'm definitely light by comparison. I use gmail's video chat rather than skype, I always found skype invasive and full of bloat. Same goes for firefox minus the invasive and heavy on the bloat.

I do use VS2008/10 but rarely and not on startup.

But yes, my main programs are chrome, jdownloader, and digsby. I have no use for any other considering that almost everything I need can be done via cloud based alternatives.

Why exactly do you have your VM's start on boot? I used ubuntu for android development in a VM at one point but I definitely wouldn't have allowed my VM to start with my computer.

 

I don't have any of those on boot!! But I need them to work, so boot or not boot - I need to run them! That's why I say that "boot-time" is misleading as 99,8% of all people need to then start one or more other programs to start doing what they do. So you can't compare 15 or 20 sec boot time to 2 sec wake up, as wake up actually restores to the point where you left off!

 

Like I said, most everything I do is via Chrome, Jdownloader, or Digsby so it's about 18 seconds (when you include chrome's 3 second cold boot) to get every application I need open.

I might make a separate topic about sleep vs shutting down, I'm curious as to what people have to say about it.

 

Don't need to

http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...cles/265760-shut-down-vs-sleep-hibernate.html

Sleep-mode was first introduced with Windows 95... you know how long ago that was!?

You are in fact an old-timer

 

Good to know. I'll sleep from now on. It'll give my cache more room for other programs anyway.

 

sleep ftw. nothing beats not having to do ANYTHING and be where you where in a matter of a second or two.

or do you shut down your phone between each call, and boot it up again? it's a habit from last century we still apply for computers, which does not make any sense.

 

Good example
Totally agree.

 

I'd never really looked into it, I had assumed that sleep did not shut down everything except the RAM. If this is the case I'll happily use sleep more often.

 

Welcome to a world, where boot-time being 10 sec faster plays pretty much no role Especially when applied once a week or a month