Disabling Fast Boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tim Haughton
  • Start date Start date
T

Tim Haughton

Is it possible to disable fast boot? What I'd like to happen is along
the lines of Linux - when the login screen appears, the hard drive is
silent. Currently, although the login screen appears quickly, the
system is unusable for about a further 45 seconds as the hard drive is
very active as it completes the boot.

I guess I'd like the individual start up tasks to be completed
(preferably with verbose on-screen output) before the login screen
appears. Anyone know if this is possible?

Cheers,

Tim
 
Tim said:
Is it possible to disable fast boot? What I'd like to happen is along
the lines of Linux - when the login screen appears, the hard drive is
silent. Currently, although the login screen appears quickly, the
system is unusable for about a further 45 seconds as the hard drive is
very active as it completes the boot.

I guess I'd like the individual start up tasks to be completed
(preferably with verbose on-screen output) before the login screen
appears. Anyone know if this is possible?
Click to expand...

Not AFAIK. Actually, having some operating system processes load *after*
the Desktop appears is a little XP sleight-of-hand to make it look as
if the system loads faster than it really does. However, a healthy XP
installation which is properly optimized should load quite fast. My XP
Pro boxen load marginally quicker than my SuSE 9.3 Pro boxen.

Do some clean-boot troubleshooting on your XP box to see what is causing
the slower startup:
Clean Boot - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=310353
and How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

Here are sites where you can look up what you find:
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm
http://www.blackviper.com/
http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm
http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/

Make sure your XP boxen are malware/virus-free:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

General XP maintenance and Slow or Sluggish Computer:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm
http://aumha.org/a/health.htm - Take Out the Trash (section 4)
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Maintenance

You cannot have the commandline verbose output of the startup the way
you can with *nix. While XP does have a useful commandline function, it
is a graphical operating system and the gui is part of Windows, unlike
*nix.

Malke
 
What you could do is put a few services on manual [Control Panel >
Administrative Tools > Services] and then have a login script to
subsequently start them later, which would reduce the amount of hard disk
activity required pre login screen.

Jon
 
Tim Haughton said:
Is it possible to disable fast boot? What I'd like to happen is along
the lines of Linux - when the login screen appears, the hard drive is
silent. Currently, although the login screen appears quickly, the
system is unusable for about a further 45 seconds as the hard drive is
very active as it completes the boot.

I guess I'd like the individual start up tasks to be completed
(preferably with verbose on-screen output) before the login screen
appears. Anyone know if this is possible?
Click to expand...


Please explain how any operating system would be able to tell the future.
You haven't logged in yet so how would the OS know which profile you would
use under which account and which startup items would get loaded under that
profile? The consequences of making choices don't happen until you actually
make the choices.

There is nothing preventing you from sitting at the computer when the login
screen appears to wait for disk activity to quiesce. However, since loading
can be concurrent, you will end up waiting longer for the system to quiesce
and then wait for all startup programs under your profile to load rather
than let them load concurrently. Stopping at a login screen awaiting
non-account processes to load is a completely arbitary behavior as it is not
required to login.

Sounds like you should be going through the startup process to determine
which programs really should not load on startup. Disable or set manual any
NT services you don't need or don't use. Configure programs to NOT load on
startup that you don't need all the time. For those that don't provide a
Windows startup option, use msconfig to disable them. Windows can load much
faster if you stop loading a bunch of superfluous software on startup and
under your profile on login.
 
Back
Top