xp startup

[Mike P]

does anyone have a solution to get xp to bootup faster.
It says it should boot in 30 seconds. Mine takes about 2
minutes. Any ideas?

[Peter van Rijswijk]

download bootvis from microsoft that might help

[Jim]

1) Use hibernation.

2) Remove floppy boot seek from BIOS. And change boot sequence to NOT
include boot floppy (or at least make it AFTER the HD), CD, etc. 99.99% of
the time you boot the HD, so why check all those other items on EVERY boot!

3) Disable unnecessary BIOS options (e.g., unused on-board RAID controllers,
parallel port, serial ports).

4) In the BIOS, instead of having each HD use "Auto" (which requires a
longer, dynamic resolution), set manually making it static but faster (use
the bios hd detection page to configure it). Again, 99.9999999% of the time
it's the same HD(s), so why keep checking it (just need to recheck ONCE when
a NEW HD is installed). Of course, disable unused IDE controllers too.

5) Disable unnecessary XP services (XP starts a LOT of services that frankly
are not necessary for 99.99% of all users, some are even a security/privacy
risk!). A few come to mind, such as Messenger, Error Reporting, Secondary
Logon, Remote Registry, etc. MS loads 'em ALL by default to make it easier
for their support needs, but few people need all these features and they
only waste CPU cycles anyway. And of course, these take time to load, have
other dependencies (sometimes serial!) that further slow the boot.

6) Don't use Windows Explore->Tools->Map Network Drives to map network
drives permanently. Instead, create a batch file and use the NET USE
command instead, then stick it in the Startup group. That way, network
connections can be done in PARALLEL w/ boot up instead of serially, as when
using the automatic relogon.

net use z: \\server1\data1

7) Disable any tray applications you don't use AT LEAST twice a day. That
system tray has become a dumping ground for virtually every new application
these days, and in many cases, completely unnecessary.

8) Run msconfig and check for any "hidden" background jobs (i.e., w/o an
interface) that may be gobbling resources (RealOne Player comes to mind, no
interface, but every few days pops up w/ some annoying event notification,
which is usually just an ad). You may also find spyware there, or even
elsewhere in the registry. DL Lavasoft Ad-aware 6.0, install and run it,
and remove any spyware that may be trying to surreptitiously run at startup.
Even legit apps in the Startup group are often unnecessary, be aggressive
about what your REALLY need to be run/running for boot up. Using msconfig,
you don't even need to remove them, just disable and see the results.

9) If you're the only user, or the predominate user, why not autologin,
particularly is security is not a real issue (e.g., home environment).

10) If using NTFS, run CHKDSK and verify that's you're using 4K NTFS
sectors! Many people are using the much less efficient 512 byte sectors
common w/ previous NT installations. If your partition was originally FAT32
but NOT aligned properly for NTFS conversion, then when you convert to NTFS
(i.e., using convert c: /fs:ntfs), the system will KEEP the old 512 byte
sector size, which is MUCH slower due to the smaller IO blocking. Of
course, this problem will affect ALL your XP operations, not just boot time.


HTH

Jim








"Mike P" > wrote in message
...
> does anyone have a solution to get xp to bootup faster.
> It says it should boot in 30 seconds. Mine takes about 2
> minutes. Any ideas?