TylerBello

To many of us,boot time is a special time. A time when we dont want to be waiting for the damn thing to boot, we want it to boot as fast as possible so we can logon to overclock.net and monitor our new watercooling setup.

In this guide I will show you how to shave precious seconds off of your boot time,by doing the things in this guide you should be able to boot at least 3 seconds faster if not more(I got way more,but it all depends on your setup)

Here we go:

1.Take away those unwanted(un-needed) windows graphical effects.

~Go to control panel and click on system
~Click the advanced tab
~Under performance,click on settings
~Click the adjust for best performance box
~Click Apply and then hit Ok

2.This may be a big hit for gamers but it can really ramp up overall system performance as well as boot time. Set your color quality to 16bit :(. If you arent gaming(or are a gamer who doesnt mind lower quality) then you can handle it.

~Go to control panel and click on display
~Click the settings tab
~In the color quality drop down box,select 16 bit
~Click Apply and then Ok

3.Take away those resource hogging icons and desktop backgrounds. Believe it or not,icons and wallpaper are real hoggers of system resources.

The easiest way to fix the icon problem is to delete most of them (you probably dont use many of them anyway) or make a single folder on the desktop and place all of your shortcuts into it.

To create a new folder:

~Right click on your desktop
~Select new,and click on folder

To get rid of those desktop backgrounds:

~Go to control panel and click on display
~Go to the desktop tab
~Under background,choose none
~Set up the color of your preference by going to the color dropdown box
~Click Apply and then Ok

4.Get rid of those un-needed programs working in the background. This improves both overall performance and boot times.

~Go to the start menu and click Run
~Type "msconfig" in the box and click ok (no quotes around msconfig)
~Dont mess with anything but what i say unless you are experienced,as messing with any of the other tabs can cause a computer to not boot properly
~Go to the startup tab and uncheck anything that you do not need,if you do not know what something is,type the name into google and you should find it.
~Press Apply and then Ok

5.Nix unused services,I can not provide a list for this as it is different for each person. If you do not know whether you need a certain service or not,google it.

~Go the start menu and click RUn
~Type "msconfig" in the box and click ok (no quotes around msconfig)
~Go the the services tab and uncheck anything you do not need/use
~Click Apply and then Ok

6.Defragment! This step should be done every week if possible. As you install/uninstall and use files,they get misplaced throughout your hard drive. Defragmenting eliminates that problem and allows windows to boot/run at full speed without the hard drive as a bottleneck.

~Click Start/Programs/Accesories/System Tools/Disk Defragmenter
~Select your boot drive and press defragment

7.(NTFS ONLY)Clear your prefetch. The prefetch is a cache that logs files so that they can be opened faster at a later date(like MSIE cache),but most of these programs will not be opened again soon so,clear it! Over time the prefetch can get pretty huge,i recommend a clearing at least once a month.

~Click My Computer
~Click C (or whatever your boot drive is)
~Go to the Windows Folder
~Go to the Prefetch Folder
~Press Ctrl+A and then press Delete
~Empty the recycle bin

8.Optimize the boot order in the BIOS. It is different for every BIOS so i cannot give a definitive guide.

~Boot into your BIOS by pressing the mobo specified key(usually shown on the post screen).
~Find an area for basic motherboard settings
~Look for First Boot Device,Second Boot Device,Etc
~Set first boot device to HDD-0 or HDD-1(for IDE) or S-ATA(for sata)
~Set second boot device to CD-ROM(or whatever drive you have
~If you dont have a floppy set the rest of the devices to none
~Save and Exit

9.Stop the computer from attempting to determine drive A's size on boot.

~Find advanced motherboard settings(may be basic)
~Disable FDD-Seek(most motherboards have the option by another name,feel free to post in the replies what yours says)
~Save and Exit

10.Disable boot sounds,they are annoying,and they waste time.

~Go to Control Panel
~Go to Sounds and Audio Devices
~Click the Sounds tab
~At the sound scheme dropdown choose no sounds
~Click Apply then Ok

11.Run Bootvis. Bootvis is a tool that was once available from microsoft(not anymore) used to trace boot times and the times that certain things occur during boot. Basically a boot benchmarking program. It can also be used to decrease boot time.

~Download it from the attachments
~Install it to drive C
~Run it
~Choose Trace/Optimize System
~Let it run its course,it can take a while. DO NOT INTERRUPT IT,DONT DO ANYTHING WHILE IT IS RUNNING! (that is a critical step)

12.Be happy because you now have a system that boots way faster than it ever has before :D


Disclaimer:Im not responsible for you wrecking your system during the course of this guide.

Note:This guide will be updated periodically as I find more ways to speed up boot time.

Attached Files

bootvis.zip (887.5 KB, 405 views)

Gnarly

This has been done before, but good job.

TylerBello

Of course it has,but not compiled like this. And if it has,then i did it first,on this forum at least.

NeueZiel

Yeah.. one thing that you are missing is Diskeeper...

You can get windows to load in 1.5-2 passes of the bootscreen bar by doing what you said and using diskeeper.

in diskeeper what you want to do is configure your MFT to 200,000 on system drives and 100,000 on storage drives... and also do a boottime defrag on paging and mft files

__________________
"People have certain obligations, thats the main reason why I have to kill you."

- Char Aznable

Roguecloud

mine loads in 1 pass of the bootscreen bar :)

go here for good info:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html

gonX

Rofl 1 pass is owned.
Did 2 passes just with bootvis, but bootvis crashed my system as while running my father were so stupid to connect his (defunct) shaver to the outlet to see if he had fixed it and then the power went off >_<
I'll look up to diskkeeper. (If it isn't diskeeper)

__________________
THE Mouse FAQ | 32-bit Resolution Fix | Important Information
64-Bit Driver Signing Fix | The Infraction and Warning System
My Anime Progress | The HoN Discussion Thread

Please direct all tech related questions to a thread in the respectable forums, and not to my PM inbox. Thank you

1greeny1

yeah BootVis, cut my boot time from 40 seconds to about 19
obviously th OS is tweaked and the grapics like the well named "Idiot amuser" turned off, nice faq!!!

Xeijin

PLEASE change the information about clearing the prefetch, it is a myth and actually causes programs to boot more slowly, DO NOT regularly clean out prefetch!! http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000024.html

__________________
x e i j i n
~ p r o p o s i t u m - l a x a m e n t u m

Stop Automatic Restart on Windows Update