Time to Boot

[Todd]

If you are running less than 1GB of RAM, I would
suggest either buying more memory to bring it up to or more than 1GB.

I have 512MB of RAM, so this is a known problem, but it's still within the
recommended system for Vista.

You could also try ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost is the same as the hard
drive's swapfile, however it is on any type flash drive
(USB/SD/CF/XD/MMC/SMS/SM/ect...). If you do use ReadyBoost, make sure it
is at least a 512MB flash drive. I do recommend a 1:1 ratio or higher to
your RAM.

I have a 512 MB USB flash drive. I'll check into Ready boost.

You mentioned you have a second hard drive, you could also try moving
the swap file to the smaller hard drive and only use this for the swap
file. This would cut back on fragmentation of your install hard drive.

I have deliberately kept Windows 2000 on the new drive, and Windows Vista on
the old drive. I don't want to mix them, even if it would help speed things
up in Vista.

Speaking of fragmentation, you should also try to defrag your hard
drives at least once a week, before installing any applications, and
after installing any applications (especially large apps). The one built
into Vista isn't that great for now; so use the one in XP if you are
dual booting. If not, pick up a decent third party defrag program.

I'll give defrag a try

There are a lot more tweaks and suggestions that I could give you, but
try these first and let us know how your faired. If you need to know how
to do any of the above suggestions feel free to ask.

-Luke

Thanks for the ideas, but I still think it's taking too long to boot.

Todd

 

[Todd]

I know that Vista has debug code, and that the code is not optimised, and
that I have drivers that are reported to be slowing down the boot (Microsoft
drivers).

In addition to the above, I am using an old slow hard drive. I used the HD
Tune 2.51 Hard Disk Utility to compare my new disk to the old disk that I
have Vista loaded on, with the following results:

WDC WD136AA (13GB) Start speed 19.5 MB/sec slowing down to 11.6 MB/sec by
the end of the test with an average though the test of 16.5 MB/sec

Maxtor 6L200RO (203GB) Start speed 61.9 MB/sec slowing down to 42.7 MB/sec
by the end of the test with an average though the test of 54.2 MB/sec

Still Vista is taking too long to boot up. Way too long.

I started the Vista boot at 12:46, it took until 12:50 until the Windows
start up music sounded, but there was still continuous disk access, and not
all the icons had appeared in the tray. At 12:56 the PC-cillin pop-up
appeared, and took until 1:02 to find, download, apply, etc all the
"components". Then it still took until 1:12 for the disk accesses to
noticibly slow down, and then until 1:15, until they slowed down to the
point where I finally decided that all boot processes were probably
complete.

Even with all the allowances for un-optimised code, debug code, and a slow
hard drive, that's way too long.

A third or quarter of that time is still too long. I suppose that most
users will depend on sleep or hibernate, so that they don't have to go
through a complete boot, but there are going to be complaints unless thay
can speed things up a lot.

Todd

 

[Mark D. VandenBerg]

It is only my humble opinion, but some of the disk action you are witnessing
my be the indexing service poking around, Let Vista run for a few days an
see if it starts to behave any better.

 

[Luke Fitzwater]

If the drivers are really slowing you down, there is little you can do
but wait until a better version of those drivers come out either by the
hardware manufacture or Microsoft.

Your processor and RAM have a lot to do with boot time as well.

If you do not have enough RAM the Windows platform will use a swap file
on the hard drive to counter balance the memory instead of telling you
"out of memory". If you are running less than 1GB of RAM, I would
suggest either buying more memory to bring it up to or more than 1GB.

You could also try ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost is the same as the hard
drive's swapfile, however it is on any type flash drive
(USB/SD/CF/XD/MMC/SMS/SM/ect...). If you do use ReadyBoost, make sure it
is at least a 512MB flash drive. I do recommend a 1:1 ratio or higher to
your RAM.

You mentioned you have a second hard drive, you could also try moving
the swap file to the smaller hard drive and only use this for the swap
file. This would cut back on fragmentation of your install hard drive.

Speaking of fragmentation, you should also try to defrag your hard
drives at least once a week, before installing any applications, and
after installing any applications (especially large apps). The one built
into Vista isn't that great for now; so use the one in XP if you are
dual booting. If not, pick up a decent third party defrag program.

There are a lot more tweaks and suggestions that I could give you, but
try these first and let us know how your faired. If you need to know how
to do any of the above suggestions feel free to ask.

-Luke

 

[Travis King]

On my computer with a Sempron 64 2800+ @ 1.6GHz and 1.5GB of PC-2700 RAM,
Vista is taking 1 minute 41 seconds to boot up at the longest, but sometimes
is down into the 1 minute 20-some second range. This is from the time I
begin to see the splash screen until the time that Vista is completely
loaded and ready to go for me to use. I could also shave a good 10 to 15
seconds off of the start time if the sidebar were disabled by seeing how
long it takes to load.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I find it visually unattractive the way the sidebar appears. It would be
better to load it up offline and then just throw it up there.

 

[Travis King]

I kind of agree. I will see for a split second the Vista blue & green in
the sidebar's place, then I'll see the black fade, and then maybe 10 seconds
later, the gadgets will appear and the clock will do it's little
hand-turning animation.

 

[Luke Fitzwater]

I've turned that thing off a long time ago.

-Luke