Name your Bootup Time??

How fast does your computer take to bootup.

measure the time taken to switch on, all the way untill everything has loaded. take off about 4-5 secs for password entry.

mine was 2 mins 15 seconds

what can i do to make this better???? why is that soo slow!!
(my dell dimension 8100, P4 - 1.8 512mb loads FASTER!!!!)
it was defragmented, and there are no virus's or spyware.


2.8 p4 775
512mb ddr400 ram
gf 5200 fx
80 seagate barracuda 2mb cache 7200rpm HD

have a look to see what's running at start up.

if you've got umpteen programs all trying to load up to be ready in the system tray, it can slow down the system at boot.

Star|Run|Msconfig|Startup|Uncheck all programs that you don't need.

I've found that key to keeping a clean system over time. There can be more things that you know that start up with the system without your knowledge.

You could also check to see how much pagefile is being used and how much free system memory you've got. That's all available through the performance tab in the task manager.

EDIT: I just rebooted and it takes me precisely 1min 30s. So you're time is not THAT bad considering that I've got 1Gb of RAM, a RAID0 array and an overclocked 3200+ CPU. I must admit that I've got a lot of startup apps and this install has been on here for well over a year and a half, but still. You're best bet is still removing startup programs with the boot manager thing.

Boot time also depends largely on the hardware involved. Windows must enumerate each piece of hardware and load its drivers in memory. So each configuration will require a different amount of time to boot.

There are several other considerations as well. There is a section dedicated to this in Nilpo's Ultimate Windows Troubleshooting Guide.

for me,
power button -> Grub -> logging into Linux is about 1 minute, 15 seconds.
power button -> Grub -> logging into windows is about 50 seconds.

i haven't really optimized Ubuntu at all, so there's a lot of modules starting up that i probably don't need. in windows on my desktop i only have 28 processes running in the background, including a firewall, antivirus and MBM5.

like mrps said, see if there's anything you can live without that starts up when windows does. and how many processes are you running once you log in, before you start any programs? task manager will tell you.

boot time not only depends on the number of startup apps, and the memory capacity, but also the seek/latency of the hard drive where the OS resides and other BIOS options, like boot order. for instance, i have BIOS set to boot directly from my primary HDD rather than check for a bootable floppy/CD. i have a barracuda, also, but its a brand new SATA300 with 8mb cache. yours only having 2mb leads me to believe that its probably only ATA100. that's a big difference. SATA300 has as high as twice the sustained read bandwidth that ATA100 has (about 55-65MB/s versus 30-45MB/s).

how much faster does your 1.8 boot up?

it boots up in about 1 min 20secs.

it runs RDRAM PC800 DUAL channal

wow, yeah that's a huge difference. see if you have any luck with msconfig and check how many processes you have running in the first place.

my MOBO can do SATA. should i buy a sata HD ??

SATA could improve boot time since it has a faster data rate, but if you switch hard drives, you're avoiding the problem, not fixing it.

just purchased anther 512mb ddr 400 pc 3200 ram stick

running in dual channel now. i see that when i maximise and minimise and open folders. its not as slow as before.

i used to think my GF FX 5200 was at fault. it seems like i needed more memory.

should i run the system with no page file? ie, no virtual memory. therefore running everything in RAm? as its faster?

Eliminating virtual memory tends to make things worse.

the idea was to reduce spinning of the "slow" Hard disk, and allowing things to run in just RAM. therefore become faster.

:sigh: read this .

i kinda understood that.

but if i left it too "system managed size"

does win xp pro, have good management for virtual memory?

it's good enough yes.