[Abdhul]

I have spent many hours researching and working at making my pc (Windows XP) boot up faster.

Please post any good ways you have found to speed up your pc's boot time in this thread. (anything at all - Bios settings, windows mods, registry settings, etc.)

I'll start:

Start >> Run >> msconfig - the most common method and it can take a sizeable chunk out of your boot time.

[Flrman1]

This thread is more suited for the Tips and Tricks forum so I have moved it here.

[Abdhul]

ok.

[Rockn]

Disable the boot splash screen and go to Black Viper and disable some services that aren't needed. It may not make it boot up much faster but it will increase your Windoze performance.

[Swiper]

http://www.tweakxp.com/display.aspx?id=1477 <----Simply the best I have found, and I do it for everyone's computer I work on.......



Post back with your results...............

[pyritechips]

Two simple things that can save you a few seconds on your boot times:

1) Desktop icons. Keep them to a bare minimum. Use the start >programs menu. That's what it's there for. Having 30 or 40 icons on your desktop takes time to load.

2) Fonts. Anything more than 100 is a waste. They take time to load every time you boot. Unless you are into heavy graphics or desktop publishing you dont need hundreds of fonts (I recently saw a thread where the person had more than 1,000 fonts!).

[Jakbrud]

Go to your bios and disable boot from floppy. Makr it boot from the hard drive right away. Should save you a few seconds

[astrodaddy]

How about ME? Is there anything I could do with it in the same way (boot up time)?

[hellcatjr]

There are a few ways to speed up the boot process into windows.

The best program out to check out your overall performance of your computer is a program called Sandra. It takes tallies on all of your current settings as well as examing to see what could be changed to help influence better performance. You can get a free trail demo version for 30 days from download.com. Just look up Sandra. This is a no BS program.

There is also a setting that checks the status of your hard drive (if supported which it should be, this is a very useful option to have turned on) It checks to see if there is a possible chance for your drive to fail. Or if there are surface areas damaged on your HD. It takes an extra 20 seconds if enable to get past the post screen. But if you wanna but up faster, turn it off.

Making sure your RAM timings are set to the most aggressive they can be without having stability issues. I am using 2 matched twinX pairs of XMS PC3700 Dual DDR 512 megs. Its aimed at being timed for 2-2-2-5. Although lower quality ram might not be able to timed aggressively, its worth a shot, there is NO physical damage for changing the timing on your RAM.

Hard Drives, its a tough choice but from XP I had learned this. A slow hard drive ='s slow boot times. I was using a old IDE 5400RPM Maxtor 40gig, an it booted into windows in around 45 seconds (posting an into windows) Its not to terrible of a long time. I could grab a drink an come back an be in windows. But come on I want lightning speed damnit!.

So recenetly I obtained a new WD Raptor 30gig SATA, It shaved off a good amount of times booting into windows.

Closeing worthless programs like winampagent, realsched, etc etc. Can increase this.

Turning off uneeded services.

So much can be done. Its just all trial an error.