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Making Vista boot faster

BillieTheBotBillieTheBot Posts: 8,721 Bot
If you are having a little of a less than stellar boot time performance from Vista after having your machine a while.

I just discovered that theres something within the msconfig boot tab, in advanced options. It turns out that you can select all the cores of your processor, be it dual or quad core, or more, and it really speeds things up. My boot time went from about 2 minute to 50 second! Going from 1 core used to 4.

I know a few people will also know about this, but thought I would mention it, just incase it could help someone.
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Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've never heard of that actually, I wonder why it isn't the default behaviour.

    Running Win 7 these days and it's nippy enough, I find the chokepoint in my system for booting windows is the hard disk. Though 2 minutes is a very long time for it to wait to load, mine is around the 40s mark at most.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Mine normally is bout 30-40seconds on vista, turn the adv option for cores on, could be interesting to see the results
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
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    Let me know of the results guys
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Wow, did NOT know about that!
    I have a Quad Core machine so I've just turned it on :D
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Just did a quick google and it seems if you leave the box unchecked vista uses all the processors automatically, the reason to limit them to a set number is in the case of debugging i.e. if its crashing on startup try with just 1 core... and so on.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It was ticked when I went into the option and it had the one turned on. So banging it up to 4 sped the bugger up!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    [EDIT] @Shyboy
    Hmmm. That does make sense. Well if I'm blown away by boot times, I'll report back.
    I did notice Windows 7 was considerably rapid when it was on this system (until the BSODs got me annoyed enough to roll back)

    @MrG
    Ah, mine was unticked, so I guess I will notice no improvement :(
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Have you tried yet? Take time to stop watch your pc from moment you press the power button, to the moment the desktop appears.

    Then tick those options etc, and shut down and do it again, let us know :P
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    My PC normally doesn't get shut down for weeks on end anyway :p just suspend!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Also set 'Timeout' to 3 seconds and tick 'No GUI boot' to speed up your boot times.

    Just tried ticking 2 cores. I saw no improvement on the time to get to logon screen (47 seconds). Dropped about 7 seconds from the time from logging in to seeing the sidebar (32 seconds).
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ShyBoy wrote: »
    My PC normally doesn't get shut down for weeks on end anyway :p just suspend!

    I'd rather suspend mine, but the power button 'pulses' with blue light, and it's so bright it's useless for sleeping in the same room as!

    As for this test, I saw no noticeable improvement
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