BobtheCkroach
04-04-2006, 01:14 AM
The Following is from the May '06 issue of Maximum PC. I thought it was pretty helpful/good information and figured the community would enjoy having it available to them as well. I haven't taken teh time to go through any of it myself, yet, but it all sounds solid. A few are obvious items that we probably all know, but there are a few here that I didn't know about as well. I got an admin's permission before posting this (in case anyone cares). Everything is paraphrased, unless I quoted it, in which case it's in quotes.
Using this scheme, they claim to have shaved a total of 31 seconds from boot. That's not bad! I don't recall my boot being that long in the first place, but still, any cutdown helps.
1) First take a moment to defrag. This will improve all types of disk intensive performance, including boot. (I think we all knwo that one)
2) Use an anti-virus and/or anti-spyware (again, we all know it, but of course viruses will slow down bootup)
3) Clean Your startup folder. Check start->All Programs-Startup. If there's stuff in there that you want starting up on boot, leave it, but remove anything that you don't. They claimed that they had only 1 startup application (Acrobat Assistant) and that removing it shaved 3 seconds off their boot time.
4) Clean the Rest of the startup folders. Go to start->run and type in msconfig and hit enter. Click the startup tab. Look for stuff that you don't want on boot. Notorious characters include Itunes/Quicktime, Nero,and many others. (from personal experience, if you type in the filename listed, about 99% of the time you can google it and find out exactly what it is) Uncheck anything that you feel safe to not have running at bootup. You probably want to leave your antivirus of choice checked, though. They claimed that this was the single biggest improvement, dropping bootup by 16 seconds!
5) Don't settle for bad service. while you're still in msconfig, click the "Services" tab. There will be a ton of services listed. The best move you can make is to check the "Hide all Microsoft Services" box. Then go through and unselect whatever you feel you don't need (Microsoft Office Engine, CD burning Apps, QuickTime, etc) and click OK. To view a more detailed list, you can go to start->run and type in services.msg From here you can permanently disable a service by right clicking it, and selecting properties. Toggle its startup value from "Automatic" to "Manual". They removed 7 items for a 7 second improvement, including things like "Acronis Scheduler","Office Engine","Symantec Event Manager","Ipodservice". If you're not using a network of any sort, you can turn of "WorkStation". They claimed that disabling that took of 2 seconds all by itself (that's probably not something that applies to many of us)
6) Boot-speed bios tweaks. Pretty simple. Enter your bios, disable any HDD controllers or raid controllers that are integrated that you're not using (make sure you know what you're talking about b4 you do this :P) If you don't have a floppy, disable that controller too. If you're not using the integrated LAN, Audio or various other peripherals, feel free to disable those as well. You'll have to find this option on your board, as it will vary. Turn on Fast-Boot, which will skip some full memory tests and a few other things in favor of gettin' goin'. "When you're looking at the settings for your HDD controller, pay attention to the Hard Disk Pre-Delay. This settings essentially puts the boot process on hold to give your hard drives a moment or two to spin up. Set this to the lowest setting that still lets the BIOS detect your hard drives." Saved them 2 seconds.
7) Train windows to fetch. Windows will try to get programs and files before you actually need them. Windows will add bits to the prefetch folder so that it can load the app faster the next time you run it. Sometimes windows does too much, though, and gets stuff you don't need, which ends up wasting resources. You can find the folder at C:\windows\prefetch Go in there and delete everything. Then go to start->run, type in regedit and go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters. Find the "EnablePrefetcher" in the right side. Right click and hit Modify. If you change the value to 2, you'll only prefetch boot items. If you type 3, it'll prefetch applicaitons and boot items. Close regedit and reboot several times, allowing Windows to configure prefetch to cache what it needs.
If you'd rather only do boot items and specify any apps that you want prefetched manually, you can set the key's value to 2 instead. After that, go to each shortcut for the apps you use, right click the shortcut and go to properties. Add "/prefetch:1" to the end of the target line (not including the quotes) After that the app will be added to the prefetch list. This was a reduction of 7 seconds.
8) Dump the XP splash screen. Everytime you boot, you stare at the screen with the loading bar. Open msconfig (Start->run type msconfig), go to the boot.ini tab and check the box labeled "/NOGUIBOOT, then restart. They claimed this saved them 2 seconds.
9) Microsoft Pitches In With Its Own Outlaw Utility. Microsoft has a boot-time tool called "Bootvis". MS claims that it doesn't do anything, but when the mag run it it saved 4 seconds (i've also used it and seen some noticable improvement).
Google bootvis and you're sure to find it. Install it, run it, click "Trace", then "Boot + Driver Delays". After rebooting, it'll show you an analysis. Click "Trace" then "Optimize" and it'll reboot and optimize.
One last thing: A few ideas that DIDN'T improve boot-time.
--Font Deletion: Windows load every font on boot, so this seems logical. Apparently it does nothing, as they deleted 94 fonts and saw absolutely no gain.
--Tweakin' boot.ini (other than the GUI tweak) - they ended up hosing their machine. and had to reinstall everything :P I wouldn't try this.
--Deleting temp files: temp files, history, cache, cookies - none helped boot at all. still do it, as it's just a tidiness issue, but it won't help bootup.
--Turning off startup sounds. Absolutely zero difference.
There you have it. Hopefully it helps everyone :thumbs: Make sure you know what you're doing, obviously. I'm posting a useful article and ideas, but if you wipe your system b/c you screwed up, that's not my fault :)
Using this scheme, they claim to have shaved a total of 31 seconds from boot. That's not bad! I don't recall my boot being that long in the first place, but still, any cutdown helps.
1) First take a moment to defrag. This will improve all types of disk intensive performance, including boot. (I think we all knwo that one)
2) Use an anti-virus and/or anti-spyware (again, we all know it, but of course viruses will slow down bootup)
3) Clean Your startup folder. Check start->All Programs-Startup. If there's stuff in there that you want starting up on boot, leave it, but remove anything that you don't. They claimed that they had only 1 startup application (Acrobat Assistant) and that removing it shaved 3 seconds off their boot time.
4) Clean the Rest of the startup folders. Go to start->run and type in msconfig and hit enter. Click the startup tab. Look for stuff that you don't want on boot. Notorious characters include Itunes/Quicktime, Nero,and many others. (from personal experience, if you type in the filename listed, about 99% of the time you can google it and find out exactly what it is) Uncheck anything that you feel safe to not have running at bootup. You probably want to leave your antivirus of choice checked, though. They claimed that this was the single biggest improvement, dropping bootup by 16 seconds!
5) Don't settle for bad service. while you're still in msconfig, click the "Services" tab. There will be a ton of services listed. The best move you can make is to check the "Hide all Microsoft Services" box. Then go through and unselect whatever you feel you don't need (Microsoft Office Engine, CD burning Apps, QuickTime, etc) and click OK. To view a more detailed list, you can go to start->run and type in services.msg From here you can permanently disable a service by right clicking it, and selecting properties. Toggle its startup value from "Automatic" to "Manual". They removed 7 items for a 7 second improvement, including things like "Acronis Scheduler","Office Engine","Symantec Event Manager","Ipodservice". If you're not using a network of any sort, you can turn of "WorkStation". They claimed that disabling that took of 2 seconds all by itself (that's probably not something that applies to many of us)
6) Boot-speed bios tweaks. Pretty simple. Enter your bios, disable any HDD controllers or raid controllers that are integrated that you're not using (make sure you know what you're talking about b4 you do this :P) If you don't have a floppy, disable that controller too. If you're not using the integrated LAN, Audio or various other peripherals, feel free to disable those as well. You'll have to find this option on your board, as it will vary. Turn on Fast-Boot, which will skip some full memory tests and a few other things in favor of gettin' goin'. "When you're looking at the settings for your HDD controller, pay attention to the Hard Disk Pre-Delay. This settings essentially puts the boot process on hold to give your hard drives a moment or two to spin up. Set this to the lowest setting that still lets the BIOS detect your hard drives." Saved them 2 seconds.
7) Train windows to fetch. Windows will try to get programs and files before you actually need them. Windows will add bits to the prefetch folder so that it can load the app faster the next time you run it. Sometimes windows does too much, though, and gets stuff you don't need, which ends up wasting resources. You can find the folder at C:\windows\prefetch Go in there and delete everything. Then go to start->run, type in regedit and go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters. Find the "EnablePrefetcher" in the right side. Right click and hit Modify. If you change the value to 2, you'll only prefetch boot items. If you type 3, it'll prefetch applicaitons and boot items. Close regedit and reboot several times, allowing Windows to configure prefetch to cache what it needs.
If you'd rather only do boot items and specify any apps that you want prefetched manually, you can set the key's value to 2 instead. After that, go to each shortcut for the apps you use, right click the shortcut and go to properties. Add "/prefetch:1" to the end of the target line (not including the quotes) After that the app will be added to the prefetch list. This was a reduction of 7 seconds.
8) Dump the XP splash screen. Everytime you boot, you stare at the screen with the loading bar. Open msconfig (Start->run type msconfig), go to the boot.ini tab and check the box labeled "/NOGUIBOOT, then restart. They claimed this saved them 2 seconds.
9) Microsoft Pitches In With Its Own Outlaw Utility. Microsoft has a boot-time tool called "Bootvis". MS claims that it doesn't do anything, but when the mag run it it saved 4 seconds (i've also used it and seen some noticable improvement).
Google bootvis and you're sure to find it. Install it, run it, click "Trace", then "Boot + Driver Delays". After rebooting, it'll show you an analysis. Click "Trace" then "Optimize" and it'll reboot and optimize.
One last thing: A few ideas that DIDN'T improve boot-time.
--Font Deletion: Windows load every font on boot, so this seems logical. Apparently it does nothing, as they deleted 94 fonts and saw absolutely no gain.
--Tweakin' boot.ini (other than the GUI tweak) - they ended up hosing their machine. and had to reinstall everything :P I wouldn't try this.
--Deleting temp files: temp files, history, cache, cookies - none helped boot at all. still do it, as it's just a tidiness issue, but it won't help bootup.
--Turning off startup sounds. Absolutely zero difference.
There you have it. Hopefully it helps everyone :thumbs: Make sure you know what you're doing, obviously. I'm posting a useful article and ideas, but if you wipe your system b/c you screwed up, that's not my fault :)