PCFormat Forum Archive

How do I speed up my boot time?

Since installing the driver for my new graphic card my boot time has doubled but according to benchmark tests it is faster now. I also noticed I had to put a link between the graphic card and my sound card to get sound.

My startup used to be standard programs etc that windows uses and other than that I have sound card drivers etc startup along with mediaSource . Except mediasource does not now start up anymore either. I can play songs in it but now the top menu in windows explorer is gone.

It bothers me. But I use windows media player 11 instead. This boot time is slow and even my slower work computer boots up faster.

go to run, type msconfig - press enter and go the the startup tab

Disable most of the crap that starts up, google each file or entry to check if you not sure whether to disable it or not

You can start by disabling Nvidia media center library (but leave the other nvidia entry to startup)

Ok. Thanks.

It seems to have speeded up by its own now. Now booting much faster and I did not change anything.

CesarePlay wrote:It seems to have speeded up by its own now. Now booting much faster and I did not change anything.

Thats Odd.

Maybe deep down inside you , you have accepted that the boot time is slower, and now it seems faster.

Hi. No it actually is much faster now. I timed it. Half the time now.

yeah especially when you take adobe speed reader out. Stupid bloody app that no one uses.

lol... XP does boot quicker on every 3rd boot so that could be what you timed ?

I timed all the time now and it is consistently faster. No idea why. I did also change the boot up priority to be the hard drive and dvd drive only. I also uninstalled the dvd program that came with the card. It as always done this to me. Every time I have bought a new card a day or two later it boots faster. It then always boots faster.

The only time it stays booting at the same speed is when I first install windows xp home service pack 3.

Tell it to delete your pagefile upon shutdown and get rid of those sound add on things-you know the ones where you plug in something and it detects it and tells you where to really shove it :-p

I also would recommend getting more RAM-like double and creating a virtual drive made up of RAM.
ie the RAM acts as a HDD and you can use it exactly the same as a regular drive.
Thus you can set your pagefile to use the VRAM HDD and it will speed things up hugely.

Also good for benchmarking. I have 4gigs but I need 64bit to use the last gig which would allow me to create such a VRAM HDD.

Ok. More ram might be useless for me. I have 4 gigs already. I try the other suggestions. I did benchmark it and got over 150 frames per second.

why not just install win7 RC1? then you wont have these slow issues. or are you adverse to change?

I like windows xp home. I used it for long time It might be old but it serves my needs. I also don't use beta or rc versions of any OS. I have oldish games and no need to have the latest and greatest cards or boards etc because I am more a console person now.

Can this topic be locked? I have solved my problem.