[PCWorld]

Post your comments for How to Make Your Windows PC Boot Faster here

[richeemxx]

<i>This setup allowed me to test real-world improvements in boot times on a system that reflected real-world usage.</i>

Real world usage for whom? Testing in a mid to low range system would have been better. It would more accurately show users results they could expect. Honestly I can't see any reason that that system would have such slow boot times. My old Pentium Dual Core boots up faster than that without making any of these rehashed changes that have been around for decades now!

[dk3d]

Couple things not mentioned:

1) Boot times vary. I believe every 4th boot windows does an extra check of integrity of the file system that can take a few extra seconds and it's during this 4th boot that it also adjust many of the prefetch files it thinks would make windows in general run faster. So you can skewed boot times.

2) I know there are a ton of article saying defragmenting a drive does little if anything to boost performance, but I beg to differ. I have two nearly identical machines (hardware and software wise) between my home laptop and my office laptop.

At home I run Diskeeper that optimizes file placement for both better boot up time and general file access. The office machine I just use windows built in defragmenting application.

My home laptop boots up into a usable state in about 30 seconds. Not even enough time to make a quick cup of instant coffee in the microwave.

My office laptop takes over 2 minutes. Enough time when I get into the office to hit the bathroom, pour a cup of coffee and mix in the sugar and milk, then walk across the office and STILL it's another minute or so before it's ready.

I do all the same cleaning and registry stuff, all the same bios settings. Yet it takes almost 4 times as long. On the office machine I just use windows defraggmenting app that comes with Windows 7.

It also performs (on the whole) more sluggisly.

[FrankSmithey]

i use my desktop at my buisness/home and i have 16 gb of ram and 2 SSD 120gb and i love it with 2 graphics cards and beleave it or not but i have set my computer to start up in about 25 sec or less depending on what i did the night before. who does not know about the msconfig it helps but when you take into all the programing in to contex the best thing to do is just load linux if you want to get some were fast windows is great for what it does and how it runs i love windows and mac i got to many of both but when windows and mac both boot at the same speed then their is not any thing to complain about but linux good ole linux mmmmm it never seems to start fast and long lasting to say. i run the unbuntu 10.11 i beleave what ever the newest one is and windows on the same pc and i just love them all why make them run faster and all if they are just running. and the coffee mmmmm that can help out at work so it is a win win for all

[Kazmatron]

You can also specify the number of cores to use during boot:



I would guess that this will help more on slower machines than fast ones.

[crazy4laptops]

My MacBook Pro boots in 8 seconds and it doesn't have an SSD array either (just a single 128gb ssd with Intel i7 Sandy Bridge)

But anyways enough about Macs ;-)

PC boot times hang on so many factors, it's insane!
Crapware is the leading cause of slowness
Unbridled running services & processes & startup items
Third, not enough RAM
Disk Fragmentation is the fastest and easiest speedup method
And slower/older hard drives in laptops is actually the root of the problem... Toshiba/Hitachi disks need to be banned from laptops!!
WD & Seagate disks are much better in speed by leaps and bounds!

I have noticed a significant performance jump with the Intel iSeries. A modern i3/5/7 based HP/Toshiba laptop can chew through the crapware and sit happy with 85 running processes! I am most impressed! Other older PC's are slow as molasses with that many!
I personally keep my Win7 processes at 35 when idle.

So that is my secret, It makes a world of a difference!

[databaseben]

booting up has always been a pain in one way or another.

if i'm not mistaken, i think microsoft or some other company is working on "instant bootup", which probably involves hardware redesign as well as with the software.

[gzuckier]

My setup (HP, Win7) takes forever to boot, if my phone (LG) happens to be plugged in to the USB connector; not sure what it thinks it's doing.

[MathiasSamuelsson]

crazy4laptops, on 17 November 2011 - 06:42 PM, said:

My MacBook Pro boots in 8 seconds and it doesn't have an SSD array either (just a single 128gb ssd with Intel i7 Sandy Bridge)

But anyways enough about Macs ;-)

PC boot times hang on so many factors, it's insane!
Crapware is the leading cause of slowness
Unbridled running services & processes & startup items
Third, not enough RAM
Disk Fragmentation is the fastest and easiest speedup method
And slower/older hard drives in laptops is actually the root of the problem... Toshiba/Hitachi disks need to be banned from laptops!!
WD & Seagate disks are much better in speed by leaps and bounds!

I have noticed a significant performance jump with the Intel iSeries. A modern i3/5/7 based HP/Toshiba laptop can chew through the crapware and sit happy with 85 running processes! I am most impressed! Other older PC's are slow as molasses with that many!
I personally keep my Win7 processes at 35 when idle.

So that is my secret, It makes a world of a difference!

Unecessary but do you even know what a PC is? Personal computer and you make it sound that the data on macs are open for everyone


OT: takes about 30 sec from start with gui and sign in with regular hdd
without gui maybe 10s

[compnovo]

gzuckier, on 18 November 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

My setup (HP, Win7) takes forever to boot, if my phone (LG) happens to be plugged in to the USB connector; not sure what it thinks it's doing.

Have you checked the BIOS to see if USB devices are set as the first boot device? My preference is to have the HDD set as first.

[Evildave]

Install Linux!

Just kidding, sort of: Assuming successful install and configuration (better than 90% chance, according to your hardware configuration) some of the distros will boot almost instantly off a clunky old mechanical hard drive. Though something like Ubuntu will take all of 30 seconds to cold boot. Off an SSD, it would probably boot PDQ.

Another thing you can do, if MSCONFIG's reboot behavior pisses you off, is run 'regedit', and search for 'runonce'. Near that, you'll find the 'run' that is that long list o' crap that is always getting longer, that msconfig edits. Most people can pretty much obliterate everything in that 'RUN' folder, and not see any difference besides the boot being quicker. Though running the name of each process through 'google', to see WTF it is, is highly recommended. There's probably a way to script cleaning out the 'RUN' folder from the registry every time windoze boots.

Many kinds of apps will put their garbage right back in there the next time they run. So then you have to search in their configuration to try to find an obscure checkbox that says 'Load at startup', and clear it. A grand example of this is multi-hundred megabyte 'taskbar' applets that provide some idiotically trivial shortcut to a system preference. Virtually all PCs ship with at least one of these, and often several. Usually with video settings, or a little animated 'printer' icon, or whatever that installed off a CD that installed THE WHOLE CD worth of ABSOLUTE CRAP that is always running, along with the 512K driver that you actually needed to make the thing work.

So another little suggestion is when you get a new hardware toy, to find the driver online, and download the relatively tiny (though often still huge) driver, rather than allow the driver CD that came with it anywhere near your optical drive. Especially for multifunction printers. It's just NIGHTMARISH, how much trash they dump into your computer, and expect to have running ALL THE TIME. Often Microsoft provides a driver for things that works just fine. Always try that first. It's a few extra steps for setting up hardware, but FFS, it's worth it.

Also, add RAM. Max it out! If your computer's more than a year old, filling it up with the maximum amount of RAM it can hold is usually a pretty cheap upgrade. The amount of time Windoze will spend loading, then 'swapping' to virtual memory while booting all the bloated trash that it accumulates from software installs and 'driver' CDs that install lots of bundleware crap can be substantial.

This post has been edited by Evildave: 18 November 2011 - 02:32 PM

[TheBigOldDog5ydw]

Buy a SSD

[JC2010]

My boot time with Windows 7 is excellent, but vary from time to time. Examples:
Yesterday 1:14:27 PM
11/20/2011 28
4 days ago
11/17/2011
44 secs
One month later
10/8/2011 45 secs

[CareTaker]

what???

[kedavis]

Following your suggestions my boot time went from 1:06 to 1:15 (i.e., it got slower).
P.S. The submit button on this page does not work on Firefox 8.0.1. I had to use the evil Internet Explorer.

[DaveCondie]

I just installed an ssd and my bios splash screen stayed up for almost a full minute. I unplugged my USB 3.0 Drive and I had iTunes open from restart in 26 seconds. Now I'm sold on ssd. Unplug bootable external drives if you want to see an insane boot speeds!