Trying to reduce startup time of laptop running XP Home

[Stan Hilliard]

I am trying to cut down the time (3 1/2 minutes) for my Compaq
Presario 2140US laptop to start up. So far I have only ordered more
memory to increase (512 --> 1G).

I saw a web page that suggested changing the registry to set "Prefetch
caches only boot system files." It also says to delete all the files
in C:\Windows\Prefetch\, which in my case contains 75 files/keys.

Q1 -- Is that a recommended procedure?


I also noticed about 130 folders in C:\Windows\ that seem different
from anything that I have seen on my other computers. They are as
follows:

Folder:
$hf_mig$ containing 1881 files and 379 folders.

Folders with blue fonts:
$NtUninstallKB828741$ Typical of 120 folders, different numbers but
same form of name. They all have Sub folders named spuninst that
contain files.

Folders with blue fonts but different name patterns:
$MSI31Uninstall_KB893803v2$
$NtServicePackUninstall$
$NtServicePackUninstallIDNMitigationAPIs$
$NtServicePackUninstallNLSDownlevelMapping$
$NtUninstallKB896727-IE6SP1-20050719.165959$
$NtUninstallKB917734_WMP10$
$NtUninstallKB925398_WMP64$
$NtUninstallMSCompPackV1$
$NtUninstallWMFDist11$
$NtUninstallwmp11$
$NtUninstallWudf01000$

Q2 -- What are these folders and should I do anything about them?

Advice will be appreciated,
Stan Hilliard

 

[Jerry]

Folders of the type \$NtUninstallKB****$ were created when you installed
various updates /patches/fixes - if you're satisfied the update/patch/fix is
working then they can be deleted, as can the *.log files in \Windows of the
same name. None of the folders listed have any impact on your start up time.
Under NO CONDITIONS do you screw with any of the files/folders in the
\$hf_mig$ folder. Period. Leave them alone.

Prefetching - the reading of system boot files into a cache for faster
loading.

Therefore emptying \Prefetch may have an effect on startup speed but if you
empty it Windows will simply recreate it and that SLOWS things down. But it
does periodically need emptying because it contains files of deleted/removed
programs. Your call.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I am trying to cut down the time (3 1/2 minutes) for my Compaq
Presario 2140US laptop to start up. So far I have only ordered more
memory to increase (512 --> 1G).

I saw a web page that suggested changing the registry to set "Prefetch
caches only boot system files." It also says to delete all the files
in C:\Windows\Prefetch\, which in my case contains 75 files/keys.

Q1 -- Is that a recommended procedure?

It's not really the place to start, and prefetch files will be recreated.

I also noticed about 130 folders in C:\Windows\ that seem different
from anything that I have seen on my other computers. They are as
follows:

You see them because this system has Show Hidden and Show Protected SYstem
Files enabled.

Folder:
$hf_mig$ containing 1881 files and 379 folders.

You should leave this alone. The hf stands for hotfix.

Folders with blue fonts:
$NtUninstallKB828741$ Typical of 120 folders, different numbers but
same form of name. They all have Sub folders named spuninst that
contain files.

Folders with blue fonts but different name patterns:
$MSI31Uninstall_KB893803v2$
$NtServicePackUninstall$
$NtServicePackUninstallIDNMitigationAPIs$
$NtServicePackUninstallNLSDownlevelMapping$
$NtUninstallKB896727-IE6SP1-20050719.165959$
$NtUninstallKB917734_WMP10$
$NtUninstallKB925398_WMP64$
$NtUninstallMSCompPackV1$
$NtUninstallWMFDist11$
$NtUninstallwmp11$
$NtUninstallWudf01000$

Q2 -- What are these folders and should I do anything about them?

They are service pack/update/hotifx uninstallers and the files they
replaced. They can be removed *only* if you think you will never uninstall
them. However, unless you're totally out of disk space, removing them will
have no impact on boot time.

And if you are low enough on disk space, removing them will help for perhaps
an hour or two; it means you need a larger disk.

Advice will be appreciated,
Stan Hilliard

Go to Start, Run, type MSCONFIG and press enter. Go to the Startup tab and
turn off everything that isn't absolutely essential. Click OK and restart.
If the system is now faster, you simply have too much stuff loading.

Pay attention to what is starting, especially including "system protection"
utilities. These will frequently add significantly to boot times.

After restarting, rerun MSCONFIG and turn on things as they seem needed and
look for performance degradation. This can take a little while.

Finally, if boot times are very long with nothing running or loading at
startup, consider disk problems and fragmentation.

HTH
-pk