Vista's Slow Boot Is Annoying Me

[Scientific]

Hello all,

On each initial boot it takes Vista about 7 to 8 minutes to finish
reading/writing to the hard disk. In the meantime while Vista's busy, it's
difficult to run any programs which take forever to load because Vista's
doing something. It's very annoying sitting there waiting for my new PC to
stop working so I can start working. I bought the Vista machine because I
thought I would be able to work more efficiently, but it turns out that my
old XP box puts Vista to shame when it comes to load time.

I know it's Vista that's lagging because I went into System Configuration
and unchecked everything that was auto loading. After reboot I went back
into System Startup and saw nothing checked. I even checked the Windows
Startup Folder and there's nothing there either. I realize Microsoft is
notorious for loading all kinds of Services that are not required for Windows
to operate. It's my belief that this may be the reason for the looonnng boot
times.

Is anyone else having this experience and if so how to decrease such long
boot times?

-S

 

[Malke]

Hello all,

On each initial boot it takes Vista about 7 to 8 minutes to finish
reading/writing to the hard disk. In the meantime while Vista's busy, it's
difficult to run any programs which take forever to load because Vista's
doing something. It's very annoying sitting there waiting for my new PC to
stop working so I can start working. I bought the Vista machine because I
thought I would be able to work more efficiently, but it turns out that my
old XP box puts Vista to shame when it comes to load time.

I know it's Vista that's lagging because I went into System Configuration
and unchecked everything that was auto loading. After reboot I went back
into System Startup and saw nothing checked. I even checked the Windows
Startup Folder and there's nothing there either. I realize Microsoft is
notorious for loading all kinds of Services that are not required for Windows
to operate. It's my belief that this may be the reason for the looonnng boot
times.

Is anyone else having this experience and if so how to decrease such long
boot times?

You need to tell us your computer hardware specs and what
antivirus/security programs you have installed before anyone can answer
you. My Vista box - a very ordinary older Dell 400SC server running at
2.8GHz with 1.5GB RAM - takes only a few minutes from hitting the power
button to being usable at the Desktop.


Malke

 

[Slap]

Hello all,

On each initial boot it takes Vista about 7 to 8 minutes to finish
reading/writing to the hard disk. In the meantime while Vista's busy,
it's
difficult to run any programs which take forever to load because Vista's
doing something. It's very annoying sitting there waiting for my new PC
to
stop working so I can start working. I bought the Vista machine because I
thought I would be able to work more efficiently, but it turns out that my
old XP box puts Vista to shame when it comes to load time.

Something is not right. I timed mine...

40 seconds -from powerup to logon screen
60 seconds - MS Office (Outlook-mail) is starting, Avast Anti Virus also.
90 seconds - I click on Windows Live Mail (use it for newsgroups) to answer
this post.

--

 

[Slap]

Something is not right. I timed mine...

40 seconds -from powerup to logon screen
60 seconds - MS Office (Outlook-mail) is starting, Avast Anti Virus also.
90 seconds - I click on Windows Live Mail (use it for newsgroups) to
answer this post.

I should state the above times were from a 're-start' not a complete power
up. I did loose a couple of seconds at my boot screen (dual boot) tho.

--

 

[Scientific]

Malke,

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 2.2GHz
1022 MB RAM
Dual 250GB Hard Drives

NOD32 Antivirus (currently disabled)
Spyware Doctor (currently disabled)
Windows Firewall

As stated before, I have disabled all software programs so the only thing
that's loading is Windows Vista.

-S

 

[Eric]

Hello all,

On each initial boot it takes Vista about 7 to 8 minutes to finish
reading/writing to the hard disk. In the meantime while Vista's busy, it's
difficult to run any programs which take forever to load because Vista's
doing something. It's very annoying sitting there waiting for my new PC to
stop working so I can start working. I bought the Vista machine because I
thought I would be able to work more efficiently, but it turns out that my
old XP box puts Vista to shame when it comes to load time.

I know it's Vista that's lagging because I went into System Configuration
and unchecked everything that was auto loading. After reboot I went back
into System Startup and saw nothing checked. I even checked the Windows
Startup Folder and there's nothing there either. I realize Microsoft is
notorious for loading all kinds of Services that are not required for Windows
to operate. It's my belief that this may be the reason for the looonnng boot
times.

Is anyone else having this experience and if so how to decrease such long
boot times?

-S

I had the same problem on a Dell Inspiron E1705 with all the mouse milk
removed. I also disabled most of the stuff on startup. I checked task
manager and looked at the processes running and the only thing using
much processor time was the system. I finally just installed XP pro and
now all is ok.

Eric

 

[Scientific]

Eric,

Thanks for the info. That's an interesting scenario you described. I also
have a Dell machine but I'm not inclined to suspect Dell as a culprit
especially since your machine is now running fine after installing XP. So,
ruling out Dell only leaves me with Vista to look at for answers.

As much as I hate to comtemplate this, I may be better off switching back to
XP which negates my whole purpose for buying a dual core machine just to run
Vista. I've had it with PC's. My next machine will be a MAC.

-S

 

[Scientific]

Slap,

So were talking about a minute or so for your box to boot. I'm assuming
that after that period of time that you have no more disk grinding that's
eating up CPU cycles like what's happening in my case. If your running Vista
and achieving a full boot in just over a minute then count yourself among the
lucky.

Until I can switch over to XP, I'm gonna have to get used to fixing a meal
or something while my hard drive grinds for 8 minutes. How depressing :-(

-S

 

[IkidUnot]

In this case, the PC specs may not be necessary to know. I've noticed
similar annoyance with my new notebook computer. I'll be it's your fine OS's
"indexing service" scanning the drive and doing its indexing. What a
nuisance!

Let this forum know if this helps or if you figure out the problem, so
others can benefit from it. As far as I know the "notify me of replies"
doesn't work, so don't count on this feature.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hello all,

On each initial boot it takes Vista about 7 to 8 minutes to finish
reading/writing to the hard disk. In the meantime while Vista's busy, it's
difficult to run any programs which take forever to load because Vista's
doing something. It's very annoying sitting there waiting for my new PC to
stop working so I can start working. I bought the Vista machine because I
thought I would be able to work more efficiently, but it turns out that my
old XP box puts Vista to shame when it comes to load time.

I know it's Vista that's lagging because I went into System Configuration
and unchecked everything that was auto loading. After reboot I went back
into System Startup and saw nothing checked. I even checked the Windows
Startup Folder and there's nothing there either. I realize Microsoft is
notorious for loading all kinds of Services that are not required for Windows
to operate. It's my belief that this may be the reason for the looonnng boot
times.

Is anyone else having this experience and if so how to decrease such long
boot times?

My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it
takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is
otherwise satisfactory, it may not be worth worrying about. Most
people start their computers once a day or even less frequently. In
the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up isn't
very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the
morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I
don't know how long it took to boot and I don't care.

However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what
programs start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them
from starting that way. On each program you don't want to start
automatically, check its Options to see if it has the choice not to
start (make sure you actually choose the option not to run it, not
just a "don't show icon" option). Many can easily and best be stopped
that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG from the Start | Run
line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you don't want to
start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of
running the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell
you, you should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs
you run, but *which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but
others have no effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do
is determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what
the cost in performance is of its running all the time. You can get
more information about these at
http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html. If you can't find it there,
try google searches and ask about specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Scientific.

That's a strong CPU but you could use another GB of RAM. But that probably
is not what's causing your 8-minute bootup time. My rig has an AMD Athlon
64 X2 5000+ with 2 GB RAM and 4 SATA HDs. I haven't timed it recently, but
it takes only a minute or so to restart, maybe a little more for a cold boot
first thing in the morning.

My first question is, "How did you shut down last time?" If you were in the
middle of doing something - reading your email, for example - and just shut
down without giving Windows Mail and other programs time to "put away their
toys" and do an orderly close, then they may be having to do their cleanup
when you restart.

Also, as the others have said, Vista's Indexing process can take a long
time, especially soon after a new installation or re-installation of Vista.
It's supposed work in the background, but it can be slow to step aside
sometimes. Click Control Panel | Indexing Options and see if the settings
are what you want. Be aware, though, that if you change something, the
index might need to be rebuilt. On my system, it usually takes a couple of
days, working in the background, to tell me something like, "950,000 items
indexed; Indexing is complete." Sometimes I just leave my computer running
overnight to let it finish the new index by the next morning.

Another process that can take some time - especially disk access time - is
defragmentation. Have you checked your system's schedule for this?

Do you have some devices that might take a while to be discovered and
started? Modem? USB hub? Printer? Network connection?

Does Task Manager tell you which process is taking a lot of CPU time?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Scientific]

incogneato,

This is the first I've ever heard anything anywhere about Vista "thinking"
and stuff about "patterns". I've been using Vista now for six months, so if
it ain't figured out my patters by now then Vista's thinking must be pretty
cloudy.

I'm more inline with IkidUnot's assessment on this. Is there anyway to turn
off Vista's indexing service? What the hell, do we really need indexing to
do a search on the hard drive, probably not!

-S

 

[Scientific]

To All Responders,

Thanks to the suggestions from all responders to this thread, I believe I
have found the culprit responsible for my systems sluggishness. As mentioned
before, during the period when my hard drive was grinding away if I started
an app it would take a while for it to finally open. Just to clear things
up, I timed it and it took an average of 25 seconds for even a simple app to
open.

When responder IKidUnot mentioned (indexing), I focused my attention on that
and everything related to indexing and opened up Services. I proceeded to
disable the following:

Ready Boost
Super Fetch
Windows Search

Now, there is no more hard disk grinding and my apps open quickly as they
should. I cannot speak for anyone else, but some of the so-called
improvements in Vista appear to be more hype than actual improvements. I
think I just discovered that some parts of Vista we might be better off
without.

Many thanks to all of you who took the time to respond. God bless

-S

 

[dennis@home]

Hello all,
8<

Is anyone else having this experience and if so how to decrease such long
boot times?

Have you tried a readyboost device (usb flash, sd card, etc.)?
It sounds like your system is the sort that may benefit until you buy some
more ram.

 

[Scientific]

Dennis,

Thanks for the suggestion. Need to look into the SD Card thing as it does
sound interesting.

-S

 

[HeyBub]

Slap,

So were talking about a minute or so for your box to boot. I'm
assuming that after that period of time that you have no more disk
grinding that's eating up CPU cycles like what's happening in my
case. If your running Vista and achieving a full boot in just over a
minute then count yourself among the lucky.

He's not lucky. I think you're the one that's cursed.

My Vista, on a 1.6GHz machine boots from power-on in about 1.5 minutes.

Until I can switch over to XP, I'm gonna have to get used to fixing a
meal or something while my hard drive grinds for 8 minutes. How
depressing :-(

Sex is more enjoyable in the interregnum. Just an idea.

 

[Charlie Tame]

Slap,

So were talking about a minute or so for your box to boot. I'm assuming
that after that period of time that you have no more disk grinding that's
eating up CPU cycles like what's happening in my case. If your running Vista
and achieving a full boot in just over a minute then count yourself among the
lucky.

Until I can switch over to XP, I'm gonna have to get used to fixing a meal
or something while my hard drive grinds for 8 minutes. How depressing :-(

-S

Right click disk drive icon > properties > uncheck "Index this drive"
and let us know if that makes a difference.

 

[Charlie Tame]

To All Responders,

Thanks to the suggestions from all responders to this thread, I believe I
have found the culprit responsible for my systems sluggishness. As mentioned
before, during the period when my hard drive was grinding away if I started
an app it would take a while for it to finally open. Just to clear things
up, I timed it and it took an average of 25 seconds for even a simple app to
open.

When responder IKidUnot mentioned (indexing), I focused my attention on that
and everything related to indexing and opened up Services. I proceeded to
disable the following:

Ready Boost
Super Fetch
Windows Search

Now, there is no more hard disk grinding and my apps open quickly as they
should. I cannot speak for anyone else, but some of the so-called
improvements in Vista appear to be more hype than actual improvements. I
think I just discovered that some parts of Vista we might be better off
without.

Many thanks to all of you who took the time to respond. God bless

-S

Ah, thought so, pity I didn't read all the messages before responding
but the main thing is you found the culprit. That certainly worked for 2
of mine.

And you are right, despite the fact that it is claimed not to affect
other functions it does, it virtually disabled the systems for the
entire boot period and while it was indexing.

 

[IkidUnot]

I'm glad you found the culprit. I want to recommend a couple of apps that
many of you probably know about:
Sysinternals' Process Explorer and Process Monitor.
These are two very small and very useful applications for hunting down
"things." It is well worth your time to get to know these, although even
your first experience with thes apps can yield information easily. They're
very small, and don't even "install." You just plop the files into a
directory of your choice and click on them or make a shortcut. Really
worthwhile.
--
-me.
Let this forum know if this helps or if you figure out the problem, so
others can benefit. As far as I know the "notify me of replies"
does not work, so do not count on this feature.

 

[IkidUnot]

The first thing that came to my mind was whehter it was necessary to disable
the readyboost service, since that's something you may want to use in the
future. That's academic for now. In the meantime, enjoy less annoyance!

-me.