I read an article that stated that 'non essential' services that do not have
to be loaded at boot time can be set to start delayed so that they start up
after the machine is up and running.
This sounded like quite a good idea, but when I go to services.msc and
select a drop down for the load type, I do not see an option for 'automatic
delayed'.
Is this only present on later incarnations of Windows. I have Win XP Home
SP3.
TIA
Martin
If you are trying to reduce the time it takes XP to load from a cold
boot you should first analyze what you consider to be a typical boot
sequence and see what is happening. Once you have that information,
you can decide how to address the issue. It is not that hard to make
a log of everything that happens when your system boots, examine it
and see what you need and what you definitely do not need. If you
need help analyzing, this is the place.
XP (and third party programs added later) loads many services and
programs by default with all options enabled so it will fit the needs
of as many users as possible without too much adjustment. First you
gotta know how long it takes.
More is not always better. Loading all the options with programs and
"enabling all" may seem like a good idea the time of installation, but
ends up in negative system performance during startup and general
use. The people that put together these installation packages don't
care about how long it takes your system to load and it probably works
great on their super fast systems with a fresh install of XP every
day. That is not the real world.
There are likely to be many applications and services loaded on your
system that may be okay for some people but not right for your
environment. Disable them! You don't have to uninstall things
necessarily, just take it out of the boot up process or turn them down
a bit.
If your system is slow to boot, first you need to determine (down to
the tenth of a second) exactly how long it takes, then optimize it the
best you can by looking at what is loading that you do not need
(probably lots of things) and measure again to see if things get
better. There is no guessing - you will know.
You can't use the subjective "I think it seems a little faster now"
method and get good results. There are also lots of things you could
"try" if you have the time to try a lot of things. Avoid suggestions
that start with the word "try" or disabling "things, culprits, likely
and suspicious items". That doesn't help you at all. You need things
to do, not things to try. No matter what method you choose, you need
to be able to see in a scale of minutes, seconds and fractions of
seconds to know for sure if you are moving in the right direction - or
when you have done the best you can possibly do.
If you use a startup delayer or a batch file, what exactly will you
delay and how long will you delay it - how do you figure that out???
(nothing personal SC Tom and Pegasus).
If it takes your computer too long to be ready for work when you power
up, consider using hibernation instead of shutting down and cold
booting.
