OT? Windows 7: Faster than XP?

[(PeteCresswell)]

I'm one of those who will probably stick with XP until they are
dragged kicking and screaming....

Having said that....

I've been fooling around with a couple of Win 7 boxes and am
starting to think that, with enough memory, it might be faster
than XP on the same PC.

I put this to somebody I know who tests on numerous OS' and he
thought 7 was faster too.

Is there anything to it?

 

[BillW50]

In

I'm one of those who will probably stick with XP until they are
dragged kicking and screaming....

Having said that....

I've been fooling around with a couple of Win 7 boxes and am
starting to think that, with enough memory, it might be faster
than XP on the same PC.

I put this to somebody I know who tests on numerous OS' and he
thought 7 was faster too.

Is there anything to it?

I have lots of computers here and I had Windows 7 on three of them. And
comparing XP to Windows 7 it was always the same. Windows 7 eats far
more processor power, runs the CPU hotter, and runs applications and
games slower. I have to run Windows 7 on my fastest machines just to
have it appear to be the same speed of XP on slower machines.

Remember that Windows 7 has some tricks up its sleeve to make it appear
faster. Like it pops up the desktop early in the boot process to make it
appear faster than XP. Windows 7 is more tuned to multi-core processors
though, so that is nice. Although running Windows 7 on any single core
processor was always a huge disappointment to me.

I too plan on keeping XP as long as I can get away with it. And so far
XP runs 100% of what I want to run. While Windows 7 only runs 95% of
what I want to run. So for me, Windows 7 is a downgrade and not an
upgrade.

 

[Peter Foldes]

In

I have lots of computers here and I had Windows 7 on three of them. And
comparing XP to Windows 7 it was always the same. Windows 7 eats far
more processor power, runs the CPU hotter, and runs applications and
games slower. I have to run Windows 7 on my fastest machines just to
have it appear to be the same speed of XP on slower machines.

Remember that Windows 7 has some tricks up its sleeve to make it appear
faster. Like it pops up the desktop early in the boot process to make it
appear faster than XP. Windows 7 is more tuned to multi-core processors
though, so that is nice. Although running Windows 7 on any single core
processor was always a huge disappointment to me.

I too plan on keeping XP as long as I can get away with it. And so far
XP runs 100% of what I want to run. While Windows 7 only runs 95% of
what I want to run. So for me, Windows 7 is a downgrade and not an
upgrade.

IAWTP 100%

 

[Paul in Houston TX]

I'm one of those who will probably stick with XP until they are
dragged kicking and screaming....

Having said that....

I've been fooling around with a couple of Win 7 boxes and am
starting to think that, with enough memory, it might be faster
than XP on the same PC.

I put this to somebody I know who tests on numerous OS' and he
thought 7 was faster too.

Is there anything to it?

I also agree with BillW50.
7-32-ahci boots up much quicker than standard xp on my laptop
but the programs seem to run about the same.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I'm one of those who will probably stick with XP until they are
dragged kicking and screaming....

Having said that....

I've been fooling around with a couple of Win 7 boxes and am
starting to think that, with enough memory, it might be faster
than XP on the same PC.

I put this to somebody I know who tests on numerous OS' and he
thought 7 was faster too.

Is there anything to it?

The boot process is definitely faster on Win 7. I've run XP-32 and W7-64
on this same machine with the same processor and amount of ram. At the
time I had 4GB of RAM, and an AMD Phenom II X3 processor. I was getting
3 minute reboot times on XP, But Win 7 was down to under 1 minute. Now,
I do notice that Win 7 just keeps loading stuff even after you've logged
in, just the same as XP, but in XP the machine is completely unusable
while it's booting, in W7 it's usable after about a 1 minute after booting.

Of course, there's the big difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when you
have enough memory. 32-bit Windows of any kind is limited to
approximately 3.5GB of RAM, even if you have more. Under 64-bit Windows,
my entire 4GB was usable. I've now since upgraded to 8GB of RAM, which
would've been a complete waste under XP32, but completely useful here.
That's not really XP vs. W7, but more like 32-bit vs. 64-bit.

I've also upgraded since then from the Phenom II X3 running at 2.6GHz to
an X6 running at 3.3GHz (3.7GHz with turbo).

Some of the tools in Win7 are really awesome, and wish they had exactly
the same thing for XP, such as the Resource Manager in Win 7. I've used
that that thing to tune up and debug Win 7 extensively. When the disk is
busy, it tells me which programs are eating up the disk. When the CPU
busy, it tells me which programs are. It tells me which programs are
eating up memory, etc. Before we just had Task Man and the Sysinternals
ProcExplorer to do this, but Resource Monitor is much better than either
of them.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Paul]

The boot process is definitely faster on Win 7. I've run XP-32 and W7-64
on this same machine with the same processor and amount of ram. At the
time I had 4GB of RAM, and an AMD Phenom II X3 processor. I was getting
3 minute reboot times on XP, But Win 7 was down to under 1 minute. Now,
I do notice that Win 7 just keeps loading stuff even after you've logged
in, just the same as XP, but in XP the machine is completely unusable
while it's booting, in W7 it's usable after about a 1 minute after booting.

Of course, there's the big difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when you
have enough memory. 32-bit Windows of any kind is limited to
approximately 3.5GB of RAM, even if you have more. Under 64-bit Windows,
my entire 4GB was usable. I've now since upgraded to 8GB of RAM, which
would've been a complete waste under XP32, but completely useful here.
That's not really XP vs. W7, but more like 32-bit vs. 64-bit.

I've also upgraded since then from the Phenom II X3 running at 2.6GHz to
an X6 running at 3.3GHz (3.7GHz with turbo).

Some of the tools in Win7 are really awesome, and wish they had exactly
the same thing for XP, such as the Resource Manager in Win 7. I've used
that that thing to tune up and debug Win 7 extensively. When the disk is
busy, it tells me which programs are eating up the disk. When the CPU
busy, it tells me which programs are. It tells me which programs are
eating up memory, etc. Before we just had Task Man and the Sysinternals
ProcExplorer to do this, but Resource Monitor is much better than either
of them.

Yousuf Khan

In 32 bit Windows, you can actually use the RAM above 4GB, for a RAM Disk.
I installed 6GB of RAM in my WinXP Pro X32 machine, and set up a 2GB RAM Disk
using this software. Since my RAM reports "3GB free", there is still 1GB
unaccounted for, when using this. Still, if you have an 8GB machine,
it allows you to get some usage from it. For example, you could use
it for a very fast Photoshop scratch disk (Photoshop's "cache").
The reason this is possible, is RAM for drivers isn't apparently restricted.
(Drivers run in Ring0, user processes in Ring3.)

http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

*******

What no one is addressing in this thread, is running an application
like SuperPI in both OSes. If you did that, you'd find there was
close to zero difference between the two OSes. The thing is, an
OS should "get out of the way" when an application is in the
"ready to run" state. And in that regard, the scheduler of each
OS should give the benchmark the same amount of time on both
OS situations. If no other processes are ready to run, and
SuperPI is, then it should get virtually all the available cycles
(in either OS).

Now, what's interesting, is they did some test runs here. The
platform is Q9650 (3GHz), and I don't think that has Turbo or
anything. It would have EIST, and perhaps there was a tiny
difference in EIST (SpeedStep) behavior ? I don't see any
mention whether EIST was disabled or not. I've done that
on occasion on my system here, for testing.

http://blog.testfreaks.com/information/windows-xp-vs-vista-vs-7/

SuperPI-32m
WinXP 18 minutes 1 second = 1081 sec
Vista 18 minutes 4 seconds = 1084 sec
Win7 17 minutes 43 seconds = 1063 sec

A fairer test, would be to ensure EIST is turned off for all
three OSes, so the scheduler can be studied in a more fair manner.
(On my current motherboard, it takes several BIOS settings to
beat it into submission, and keep the CPU at constant speed.)
We don't know whether EIST was turned off or not for that test.
(On AMD, it would be Cool N' Quiet.)

SuperPI is single threaded, and on WinXP and with the Q9650
(basically a couple E8400 paired inside the CPU package), the
scheduler would bounce the process from core to core (any of the
four cores). It's possible one of the other OSes, is smart enough
to keep SuperPI on one of the two silicon die, so it doesn't bounce
off the die. That means, of the four cores, the process would bounce
between the two of them that share a local cache (no excess FSB bus traffic).
That would be another potential reason for a slight improvement.

So if there is a speed difference, it's not major. And it
needs careful study, to figure out where the differences come from.

To emulate a "lack of bouncing" on the WinXP system, you can
open Task Manager and "set Affinity" on the SuperPI process,
just before you click the button to start the benchmark. That
would allow testing whether that's why WinXP is a bit slower.

http://web.archive.org/web/20071026154640/http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/super_pi_mod-1.5.zip

The above test runs, are for SuperPI computing 32 million digits.
That has a memory footprint of around 256MB, which means the
benchmark doesn't fit entirely in the cache of the processor.
Such a detail isn't that important in this case, as you're not
comparing different processors in as fair a manner as possible.
To test the OSes, you could use fewer digits, as they should
all get a benefit from processor cache. The long runtime of a
32 million digit run, is so two processors that only differ
in cache size, will see the same runtime. If you trim down the
size of the run, you can get a better picture of how the cache
is helping.

That's how I measure OS speed... Does it get in the way of
what I want to do, or not.

Paul

 

[Kernel]

| On 22/02/2012 5:53 PM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
| > I'm one of those who will probably stick with XP until they are
| > dragged kicking and screaming....
| >
| > Having said that....
| >
| > I've been fooling around with a couple of Win 7 boxes and am
| > starting to think that, with enough memory, it might be faster
| > than XP on the same PC.
| >
| > I put this to somebody I know who tests on numerous OS' and he
| > thought 7 was faster too.
| >
| > Is there anything to it?
|
| The boot process is definitely faster on Win 7. I've run XP-32 and W7-64
| on this same machine with the same processor and amount of ram. At the
| time I had 4GB of RAM, and an AMD Phenom II X3 processor. I was getting
| 3 minute reboot times on XP, But Win 7 was down to under 1 minute. Now,
| I do notice that Win 7 just keeps loading stuff even after you've logged
| in, just the same as XP, but in XP the machine is completely unusable
| while it's booting, in W7 it's usable after about a 1 minute after
booting.
|
| Of course, there's the big difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when you
| have enough memory. 32-bit Windows of any kind is limited to
| approximately 3.5GB of RAM, even if you have more. Under 64-bit Windows,
| my entire 4GB was usable. I've now since upgraded to 8GB of RAM, which
| would've been a complete waste under XP32, but completely useful here.
| That's not really XP vs. W7, but more like 32-bit vs. 64-bit.
|
| I've also upgraded since then from the Phenom II X3 running at 2.6GHz to
| an X6 running at 3.3GHz (3.7GHz with turbo).
|
| Some of the tools in Win7 are really awesome, and wish they had exactly
| the same thing for XP, such as the Resource Manager in Win 7. I've used
| that that thing to tune up and debug Win 7 extensively. When the disk is
| busy, it tells me which programs are eating up the disk. When the CPU
| busy, it tells me which programs are. It tells me which programs are
| eating up memory, etc. Before we just had Task Man and the Sysinternals
| ProcExplorer to do this, but Resource Monitor is much better than either
| of them.
|
| Yousuf Khan

If your XP reboot time is 3 minutes, you might benefit from a boot logger
to find the culprit. Normal boot up for XP is about 50 seconds to 1 minute.
Shut down time is about 15 seconds or less unless some program is hanging
the shut down.

If you want to boot XP in about 5 seconds, just install the Asrock 890 FX
Deluxe 4 mobo with instant boot. Yes, you read that correctly, 5 second
boot times with XP on that board with the Instant Boot Utility.

 

[BillW50]

In Paul wrote:
[...]

In 32 bit Windows, you can actually use the RAM above 4GB, for a RAM
Disk. I installed 6GB of RAM in my WinXP Pro X32 machine, and set up
a 2GB RAM Disk using this software. Since my RAM reports "3GB free",
there is still 1GB unaccounted for, when using this. Still, if you
have an 8GB machine, it allows you to get some usage from it. For
example, you could use it for a very fast Photoshop scratch disk
(Photoshop's "cache"). The reason this is possible, is RAM for drivers
isn't apparently restricted. (Drivers run in Ring0, user processes in
Ring3.)

Both Windows 2000 and XP SP0-1 32 bit aren't restricted to 4GB. And the
reason why XP SP2-3 is limited to 4GB is because some 32-bit drivers
were not written to work past the 4GB boundary. The problem exists with
Windows 2000 and XP SP0-1 too, but they were not restricted to 4GB max
for some reason.

What no one is addressing in this thread, is running an application
like SuperPI in both OSes. If you did that, you'd find there was
close to zero difference between the two OSes. The thing is, an
OS should "get out of the way" when an application is in the
"ready to run" state. [...]
That's how I measure OS speed... Does it get in the way of
what I want to do, or not.

Paul

I do these tests differently. I usually have more than any model of
computer so I can run more than one at a time. Sometimes with different
OS. And all you have to do is to run Windows 7 on an Asus EeePC 701 or
702 which has a Celeron 900MHz underclocked to 633MHz.For this test both
XP and Windows 7 machines has 2GB of RAM installed. And Windows 7 at
idle eats up 50% of the processor which allows only 50% left for
applications. XP on the same machine uses less than 10% at idle. So
applications have far more processor power. And this is very easy to
see.

Things change on multi-core machines. I've never seen a multi-core ever
hit 100% usage on only one of the cores let alone all cores. Although I
haven't actually tried to do so outside of normal use and gaming.
Probably because the multi-core can handle virtually anything faster
than the bus can deliver (just a guess). Now the difference in speed
between XP and Windows 7 is far less noticeable.

But even with multi-core processors, Windows 7 still hits the CPU usage
higher and the processor runs hotter for the same tasks than XP does.
And if you are using a processor with SpeedStep (Intel) or PowerNow
(AMD) enabled, XP functions well running at the slowest speed. Windows 7
even at idle hits the CPU hard enough that it won't stay at the lowest
speed for very long before switching back up again.

So there is no question in my mind that Windows 7 uses far more CPU
power than XP does. Although if you have a multi-core processor and have
plenty of CPU power to spare, then you probably won't miss the extra
load that Windows 7 requires anyway.

 

[BillW50]

In

The boot process is definitely faster on Win 7. I've run XP-32 and
W7-64 on this same machine with the same processor and amount of ram.
At the time I had 4GB of RAM, and an AMD Phenom II X3 processor. I
was getting 3 minute reboot times on XP, But Win 7 was down to under
1 minute. Now, I do notice that Win 7 just keeps loading stuff even
after you've
logged in, just the same as XP, but in XP the machine is completely
unusable while it's booting, in W7 it's usable after about a 1 minute
after booting.
Of course, there's the big difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when
you have enough memory. 32-bit Windows of any kind is limited to
approximately 3.5GB of RAM, even if you have more. Under 64-bit
Windows, my entire 4GB was usable. I've now since upgraded to 8GB of
RAM, which would've been a complete waste under XP32, but completely
useful here. That's not really XP vs. W7, but more like 32-bit vs.
64-bit.
I've also upgraded since then from the Phenom II X3 running at 2.6GHz
to an X6 running at 3.3GHz (3.7GHz with turbo).

Some of the tools in Win7 are really awesome, and wish they had
exactly the same thing for XP, such as the Resource Manager in Win 7.
I've used that that thing to tune up and debug Win 7 extensively.
When the disk is busy, it tells me which programs are eating up the
disk. When the CPU busy, it tells me which programs are. It tells me
which programs are eating up memory, etc. Before we just had Task Man
and the Sysinternals ProcExplorer to do this, but Resource Monitor is
much better than either of them.

Yousuf Khan

 

[BillW50]

In

The boot process is definitely faster on Win 7. I've run XP-32 and
W7-64 on this same machine with the same processor and amount of ram.
At the time I had 4GB of RAM, and an AMD Phenom II X3 processor. I was
getting 3 minute reboot times on XP, But Win 7 was down to under 1
minute. Now, I do notice that Win 7 just keeps loading stuff even
after you've logged in, just the same as XP, but in XP the machine is
completely unusable while it's booting, in W7 it's usable after about
a 1 minute after booting.

Oh come on! Do the test fair! As a fresh XP SP2 install even on an Asus
EeePC 702 only takes 1 minute and 10 seconds to boot up. As Windows in
general can take longer to boot with more programs starting up like AV,
utilities, drivers, and such.

Windows 2000 for example, on my Toshiba 2595XDVD with 192MB of RAM takes
8 minutes to boot up and 10 minutes to wake up from hibernation. This is
no way a refection on how slow Windows 2000 is, because it isn't. But it
is a reflection of limited RAM, slow CPU (400MHz), slow drive (4200rpm),
and tons of add-ons stuff running in the background. I know it was much
fasting at booting up with a fresh install before SP, updates, and lots
of software was added.

Sure Windows 7 has this trick to focus loading the desktop up first. No
doubt about it. I thought about patching XP to throw up a fake desktop
from the start of boot to see if anybody is fooled that XP now loads
faster. But if you are interested in faster boot times, there are other
things you can do too. Like this laptop hasn't been rebooted in the last
13 days. As I use hibernation (wakes up in 23 seconds) or standby mode
(wakes up in 4 seconds) instead.

Of course, there's the big difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when
you have enough memory. 32-bit Windows of any kind is limited to
approximately 3.5GB of RAM, even if you have more. Under 64-bit
Windows, my entire 4GB was usable. I've now since upgraded to 8GB of
RAM, which would've been a complete waste under XP32, but completely
useful here. That's not really XP vs. W7, but more like 32-bit vs.
64-bit.

Windows 2000 and XP SP0-1 32-bit can use more than 4GB of RAM. The
restriction only came since XP SP2 and up.

I've also upgraded since then from the Phenom II X3 running at 2.6GHz
to an X6 running at 3.3GHz (3.7GHz with turbo).

Some of the tools in Win7 are really awesome, and wish they had
exactly the same thing for XP, such as the Resource Manager in Win 7.
I've used that that thing to tune up and debug Win 7 extensively.
When the disk is busy, it tells me which programs are eating up the
disk. When the CPU busy, it tells me which programs are. It tells me
which programs are eating up memory, etc. Before we just had Task Man
and the Sysinternals ProcExplorer to do this, but Resource Monitor is
much better than either of them.

Yousuf Khan

There are lots of programs like this for XP and Windows 7 for that
matter. I use Process Lasso (there is a more limited free version of
this too). As it keeps anything from hogging any of the system
resources. Sure you can tweak applications with it too. But it also
works well without tweaking if you want too.

Process Lasso Free - Auto-optimize process priorities and much more!
http://www.bitsum.com/prolasso.php

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Yousuf Khan:

Of course, there's the big difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when you
have enough memory. 32-bit Windows of any kind is limited to
approximately 3.5GB of RAM, even if you have more. Under 64-bit Windows,
my entire 4GB was usable. I've now since upgraded to 8GB of RAM, which
would've been a complete waste under XP32, but completely useful here.
That's not really XP vs. W7, but more like 32-bit vs. 64-bit.

That's been in the back of my mind since the OP.

How do I tell whether I have 32 or 64-bit XP?

I suspect the former bc all my systems are from a rather old set
of MSDN discs.

Here's what SystemInfo says about the sys in question.
I guess it's in "Build Lab" and/or "Kernel Version",
but here's the whole enchilda anyhow:
=======================================================
Name Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3
Features Terminal Services in Remote Admin Mode, Multiprocessor
Free
Activation Status Activated
Checked Build No
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
System Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Kernel Version 5.1.2600.6165
Security 128 bits
Product Name Microsoft Windows XP
Build Lab 2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.111025-1629

Hardware DEP Available Yes
DEP for 32 Bits Applications Yes
DEP for Drivers Yes
DEP Policy OptIn (only Windows system binaries)
Windows Update's version number 7.4.7600.226
Automatic Updates Download updates for me, but let me choose when
to install them
System Restore Enabled

Owner Kolon
Machine GUID b317f397-5d39-41f1-993a-6cdebbdb15c6

PageFile Name \??\C:\pagefile.sys
PageFile Size 2046 MB
In use 656 MB
Max used 656 MB
Registry Size 6 MB (current), 120 MB (maximum)
Default Browser C:\Documents and Settings\Kolon\Local
Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

Restore Points
System Checkpoint 2012-02-16 15:51:18
System Checkpoint 2012-02-17 23:28:52
System Checkpoint 2012-02-19 01:53:38
Installed iTunes 2012-02-20 00:21:41
System Checkpoint 2012-02-21 03:03:32
System Checkpoint 2012-02-22 03:30:54
System Checkpoint 2012-02-23 11:18:34

Workgroup 303
Computer Name GIGA
Language English (United States)
Installation Time Wed Jan 26 14:17:05 2011
Boot Time 02/23/2012 08:11:56.109
Running Time 1 Hour 42 Minutes 55 seconds

Number of Open Programs 7


Screen Saver Starfield Screen Saver
Wait 10 Minutes

Active Desktop Installed
=======================================================

And I'm assuming my box is 64-bit:
=======================================================
Property Value
Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Model EP45-UD3L
Version x.x
Serial Number

CPU Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8400 @ 2.66GHz
Cpu Socket

System Slots 2 PCI

Memory Summary
Maximum Capacity 4096 MBytes
Maximum Memory Module Size 1024 MBytes
Memory Slots 4
Error Correction None

Warning! Accuracy of DMI data cannot be guaranteed

Property Value
Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Family
Product Name EP45-UD3L
Serial Number
SKU Number
Machine Type AT/AT COMPATIBLE
Infrared (IR) Supported No
DMI System UUID 00000000-00000000-00000024-1D25CC94
UUID 00000000-0000-0000-0000-00241D25CC94

Disk Space Disk C: 21 GB Available, 48 GB Total, 21 GB Free
Disk D: 13929 MB Available, 26317 MB Total, 13929 MB Free
Disk E: 236 GB Available, 931 GB Total, 236 GB Free
Disk F: 1501 MB Available, 1938 MB Total, 1501 MB Free
Disk N: 4113 GB Available, 7399 GB Total, 4113 GB Free
Disk O: 4113 GB Available, 7399 GB Total, 4113 GB Free
Disk S: 4113 GB Available, 7399 GB Total, 4113 GB Free
Disk U: 290 GB Available, 1863 GB Total, 290 GB Free
Disk V: 90 MB Available, 1907727 MB Total, 90 MB Free

Physical Memory 2047 MB Total, 898 MB Free
Memory Load 56%

Virtual Memory 3939 MB Total, 2160 MB Free

PageFile Name \??\C:\pagefile.sys
PageFile Size 2046 MB
In use 679 MB
Max used 679 MB

Profile GUID {85364440-2955-11e0-b3ac-806d6172696f}

The system clock interval 15 ms
=======================================================

 

[Yousuf Khan]

If your XP reboot time is 3 minutes, you might benefit from a boot logger
to find the culprit. Normal boot up for XP is about 50 seconds to 1 minute.
Shut down time is about 15 seconds or less unless some program is hanging
the shut down.

Trust me, I've run through every performance boosting scenario on XP
till I was blue in the face. I ran Bootvis, I went through the Event Log
and fixed up every startup error or warning there was, I got it down to
at best under 2 minutes to boot, and then it kept creeping back up to
the over 3 minute mark over time again.

I've watched the Windows 7 during boot up using Resource Manager, at one
point I found that it kept doing startup duties about 17 minutes after
bootup, disk showed constant activity, but it kept the activity small
enough that you could still use the system much earlier. I suppose it
was doing some disk indexing among other things for that long.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Peter Foldes]

If you want to boot XP in about 5 seconds, just install the Asrock 890 FX
Deluxe 4 mobo with instant boot. Yes, you read that correctly, 5 second
boot times with XP on that board with the Instant Boot Utility.

My boot time from a cold boot to Desktop is 15 seconds. But I am using a Server OS
with nothing running in background or at start up

JS

 

[Yousuf Khan]

In

Oh come on! Do the test fair! As a fresh XP SP2 install even on an Asus
EeePC 702 only takes 1 minute and 10 seconds to boot up. As Windows in
general can take longer to boot with more programs starting up like AV,
utilities, drivers, and such.

It's not my business to do the test "fair", my only business is to do
the test in the way that I use my computer in real life. Both OS's were
setup as real world systems doing real world duties, and Windows 7 came
up faster, using the exact same machine and same applications. So in
that sense, it was a truly fair test.

Sure Windows 7 has this trick to focus loading the desktop up first. No
doubt about it. I thought about patching XP to throw up a fake desktop
from the start of boot to see if anybody is fooled that XP now loads
faster. But if you are interested in faster boot times, there are other
things you can do too. Like this laptop hasn't been rebooted in the last
13 days. As I use hibernation (wakes up in 23 seconds) or standby mode
(wakes up in 4 seconds) instead.

It's not just an illusion, XP is truly unusable during startup for
several minutes afterwards, even after the desktop comes up. It just
keeps loading program after program, one after the other. You can't
click on anything because startup is still going on in most cases.

Windows 7 makes use of multi-core processors to load multiple startup
programs simultaneously as much as possible. When you complain that
Windows 7 is hitting the processor harder than XP, you betcha, that's
exactly what it's supposed to be doing in order to boot up faster. XP's
multi-core support was mainly an afterthought, somewhat backported from
Windows Server when dual-core processors first started appearing. XP
started out firmly in the single-core processor days.

Of course, multicore processors are only going to help so much during
startup. The real bottleneck is the disk system, here the only solution
is to go with SSD's rather than hard disks.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Per Yousuf Khan:

That's been in the back of my mind since the OP.

How do I tell whether I have 32 or 64-bit XP?

The easiest way to tell is to go into C: drive and see if there is both
a "Program Files" and a "Program Files (x86)" subdirectory in there. If
it just has the former but not the latter, then it is 32-bit. Also in
XP, 99.99999% of installations were the 32-bit XP, 64-bit XP came out
towards the end of 2005, and it hardly had any traction. Vista came out
not long afterwards in both 32-bit and 64-bit varieties. 64-bit Vista
was much more popular than 64-bit XP.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Paul]

It's not just an illusion, XP is truly unusable during startup for
several minutes afterwards, even after the desktop comes up. It just
keeps loading program after program, one after the other. You can't
click on anything because startup is still going on in most cases.

I just tested the boot time here.

WinXP Pro SP3 x32 on E8400 dual core, regular Seagate rotating hard drives
(no SSD). Since I have two OSes in the boot menu, I have to press Enter
when the menu appears. Otherwise if I kept hands off keyboard, it would
take another 30 seconds for the menu to time out and select the default
choice. If I pushed the power button, and went to the kitchen to make
coffee, I'd add 30 seconds to the total, because of that menu.

BIOS component - 18 seconds
OS component - 29 seconds (five tray icons loaded, 3 MS, SoundMax, Video)
(busy cursor gone away)
Total 47 seconds

A few seconds after the busy cursor goes away, I get the usual
Security Center notification. There can be a slight interaction
between what that is doing, and an attempt to use the Start menu. But
I can usually manage to start something from the menu, with
the experience of knowing the right timing. My process launch
does not run at the normal speed, and there can be a significant
random delay, until it does start running. But at that point,
if I start a second process, it will experience normal launch speed.
There is something going on in the background, but it doesn't absolutely
block things for the whole time it is happening. There is a small period
where it does foul up the Start menu, but working around that, I can
usually sneak in my desired first program.

So it doesn't have to be 3 minutes. Either that is indexing, AV
initial scan, or something. I'm guessing it's AV. This machine
doesn't have much on it, in terms of "gadgets". Indexing is
turned off.

My Win2K, by comparison, is more of a pig, due to its more
sequential startup. That one is probably at least a couple
minutes.

My Win7 laptop could well be faster on boot, but the
hardware differences don't make it a fair comparison.
The drive in the laptop is pretty sluggish.

The boot time on this WinXP machine, doesn't bother me too much.
I suppose I could leave it in Standby overnight, if I didn't like it.

What *is* slow on this machine, is Paging. If something needs to page
in a significant way, the process needing the paging can experience
a significant dead time, of anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute.
It would seem that the Paging is done with random 4K blocks, causing
the hard drive grief. So the head on the disk gets a good workout.
I consider that to be more objectionable, than the WinXP boot behavior,
because it distracts from what you're trying to do. I can eliminate this
effect entirely, if I place the pagefile on a RAMDisk (the 6GB installed
test case for this machine, 2GB RAMDisk). That was smooth as can be.

Paul

 

[Kernel]

| On 23/02/2012 7:14 AM, Kernel wrote:
| > If your XP reboot time is 3 minutes, you might benefit from a boot
logger
| > to find the culprit. Normal boot up for XP is about 50 seconds to 1
minute.
| > Shut down time is about 15 seconds or less unless some program is
hanging
| > the shut down.
|
| Trust me, I've run through every performance boosting scenario on XP
| till I was blue in the face. I ran Bootvis, I went through the Event Log
| and fixed up every startup error or warning there was, I got it down to
| at best under 2 minutes to boot, and then it kept creeping back up to
| the over 3 minute mark over time again.
|
| I've watched the Windows 7 during boot up using Resource Manager, at one
| point I found that it kept doing startup duties about 17 minutes after
| bootup, disk showed constant activity, but it kept the activity small
| enough that you could still use the system much earlier. I suppose it
| was doing some disk indexing among other things for that long.
|
| Yousuf Khan

Then it's time to reformat and reinstall XP.

 

[BillW50]

In

My Win2K, by comparison, is more of a pig, due to its more
sequential startup. That one is probably at least a couple
minutes.

Oddly enough I tried Windows 2000 on one of these Asus EeePCs a couple
of years ago. And I thought I saved a backup before I put XP back on it,
but I can't find one. So this morning I installed Windows 2000 SP4 from
scratch. And it boots up in 35 seconds and it is really to go as soon as
the desktop pops up. No drive activity or anything afterwards. I have
nothing else installed except a few drivers that I found so far.

 

[BillW50]

In BillW50 typed:

In

Oddly enough I tried Windows 2000 on one of these Asus EeePCs a couple
of years ago. And I thought I saved a backup before I put XP back on
it, but I can't find one. So this morning I installed Windows 2000
SP4 from scratch. And it boots up in 35 seconds and it is really to
go as soon as the desktop pops up. No drive activity or anything
afterwards. I have nothing else installed except a few drivers that I
found so far.

I ended up installing some software and now the drive keeps running
after the desktop shows. But I can still operate while it is doing so.
;-)

Geez I fired up IE and all of the web pages looked really bad and most
of the stuff wouldn't render at all. And I thought IE6 does better than
this and I checked IE about and I forgot Windows 2000 installs IE5. lol
At least OE5 looked and worked very much like OE6 anyway. Update to
IE6SP1 and now the left pane of Explorer is blank without any drive
tree. It is always something, isn't it?

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Yousuf Khan:

Trust me, I've run through every performance boosting scenario on XP
till I was blue in the face

The biggest improvement I got was when I converted the system
drive from hard disc to SDD.