Disk Initialization in Windows XP...and how speed up XP startup?

[Fenix793]

OK I've been trying to speed up my boot time which according to bootvis takes 36 seconds. The first thing my comp does after the BIOS screen is it sits there for a while with no hard drive activity. Bootvis says the first thing my computer does is initialize the disk...for 11 seconds. Now I have heard of people going through a full bootup in like 6 seconds. I'm not expecting that but when I first installed XP it would boot in maybe 15 seconds.

This happened to me before when I changed CDROM drives. Except it sat there for maybe 20 seconds. I changed my CDROM drive back to the old one and low and behold it started up fast again. Thing is this time I haven't changed any drives. Why could it be taking so long. ANd also what do you guys suggest to get faster boot times?

 

[BmXStuD]

duh i dunno

 

[SafeZone]

perhaps you can set your driver parameters in your bios so it doesn't have to auto-detect them everytime you boot-up.

To make boot-up times faster, I would suggest running bootvis several times, getting rid of those little startup programs using MSCONFIG and also disabling unncessary windows services.

also make sure there's nothing in ur autoexec.bat file...there shouldn't be anything

 

[Willoughbyva]

Is your computer on a network through a network card? Windows will try to initialize the network and get the network strieght before it gets to the desktop.

Is there a setting in your bios to "reset configuration" or something like that? I *think* that whenever you make hardware changes you need to set that to enabled.

 

[stranger707]

XP boots up plenty fast. It is such an improvement over previous Windoze operating systems I can't believe you aren't satisfied. Maybe you ought to cut back on the meth.

 

[zephyrprime]

You probably have a zombie disk in your computer's hardware profile. Go to control panel, system administration, disk manager and see if there are any listed drives that aren't actually on your computer any more.

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: Willoughbyva
Is your computer on a network through a network card? Windows will try to initialize the network and get the network strieght before it gets to the desktop.

Is there a setting in your bios to "reset configuration" or something like that? I *think* that whenever you make hardware changes you need to set that to enabled.

From what I gather from his discription, it shouldnt be a network issue yet. DHCP might slow the boot process, but no until later. XP tries to get an IP at the 'Welcome' screen.

I had an older 12.9GIG harddrive from 98, and when I installed an NT based OS on it, when I booted, it would spin up normally, then when windows would first start loading, it would 'click' like it was... 'changing modes' or something. It would take about 5 seconds to initialize, as opposed to just booting normally in Win9x. Then it would continue to boot the OS normally. Not sure what your problem could be.. Just an older harddrive?

Im not sure the specs of your system, but for reference, my PII 400 with 256 RAM Western Digital 40 GIG ATA 100 (ATA33 Controller) can boot to a usable state on the desktop in about 35 seconds. I should run bootvis again, since I havent done it in a year..

 

[johnjkr1]

I had a problem with startup, It went something like this..

New board, new load of xp....standard components, one hard drive, one cdrom....bootup took over a MINUTE!!

Put XP service pack one on there....45 seconds..great

then, i had the crazy idea to move both of my drives to master...the cdrom was slaved on the second channel......10 seconds..

 

[Fenix793]

dang 10 seconds? thats fast...gonna go try some stuff. This is the second time this has happened to me. I'm gonna solve it this time.

 

[Fenix793]

ok I went in to the BIOS and I manually set up the hard drive. I also had my cdrom drive set to slave when it was the only one on the cable. XP didn't stop during the boot process....problem solved. I ran bootvis to see my time went from 46 to 26. I shut off the logon screen and some other bs that was running in the background and got it down to 25 seconds. Not bad for just a few settings. I wish I could get 10 seconds but 25 seems pretty fast to me.

 

[johnjkr1]

Its funny that was it....It took me FOREVER to figure that one out...glad its working better for ya