Stop hard drive from going idle, and make mouse start faster

[MikeyMcMikerson]

Hello, I have two issues that I thought I'd bring here because this site's article were so helpful when building my computer. FYI, I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate.

First:

I have an Intel 80 gig (34nm) main drive, and a Samsung HD103SJ (1TB) secondary drive. My OS and firefox are on the Intel, and all my Steam games are on the Samsung.
When I'm browsing the web for a while the Samsung is totally un-used, so I'm assuming it goes into some sort of idle state. When I try to start Steam up, there's a several second delay followed by a "click" sound which I think is the Samsung getting back into gear. Can I make the drive unable to go to an idle state so low that there is a long delay to start up again?

Second:

Sometimes my mouse (a steelseries XAI) won't move right away after starting up, but sometimes it does. I feels like it just depends where on the list of processes to start up it gets put. Sometimes the millisecond the desktop appears the mouse pointer will respond, other times it won't move till 3 seconds after the desktop appears. Can I modify start up priorities, and how?

I guess these are both relatively small issues, but after a few months they are starting to bug me, so any advice would be great.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[tyler811]

In the power settings click on advanced power powers setting and see if "hard disk" is set to off after a certain amount of time.

You can limit or turn off what starts up on your computer by going into msconfig. I am running Vista Ultimate and the only things I have starting up is my touch pad (laptop) and anti virus. Steam and everyting else I start manually depending on the appilcation. As with Bioshock 2 I put "-nointro" in the startup command in the shortcut on my desktop. This way it starts Steam and GFWL one time and I do not have to wait for the silly credits to play.

By turning off what starts up your pc willl boot faster to your desktop.

 

[MikeyMcMikerson]

The power setting tip helped, thanks. Man, I just put that on 'high performance', and between that and me being on a desktop I figured it wouldn't impose any stupid time limits. I didn't notice the advanced options. The HD and the monitor where on short kill times. Not anymore. Thanks. I don't know what service in msconfig controls the mouse pointer though. And if I did It just seems to have an on or off setting. My mouse pointer take a few extra seconds to start moving after the desktop appears (sometimes) so I think I need to set the related service on a higher load priority, not just turn it on. Or maybe somethings else entirely, I'm not sure.

 

[tyler811]

The power setting tip helped, thanks. Man, I just put that on 'high performance', and between that and me being on a desktop I figured it wouldn't impose any stupid time limits. I didn't notice the advanced options. The HD and the monitor where on short kill times. Not anymore. Thanks. I don't know what service in msconfig controls the mouse pointer though. And if I did It just seems to have an on or off setting. My mouse pointer take a few extra seconds to start moving after the desktop appears (sometimes) so I think I need to set the related service on a higher load priority, not just turn it on. Or maybe somethings else entirely, I'm not sure.

The reason your mouse takes so long before you can use it is because of all the programs you have starting up when you boot up. Check MSCONFIG and tell me how programs you have starting up when you boot up. The more programs you have starting up the longer the delay in your mouse because the cpu cycles and memory are being taken up by all the programs starting up. Thus your mouse and keyboard will be slower to react at start up.

 

[MikeyMcMikerson]

tell me how programs you have starting up when you boot up.

The 'startup' tab has only ESET antivirus, Steam, and CCC checked. The 'services' tab has a boatload of important sounding things marked as belonging to microsoft corps, with just a couple ESET and one AMD. It must be working on other things while the mouse can't move, but could I fix it by making it load the mouse first instead of disabling a bunch of stuff? I'm on a i5 and an SSD, Steam and CCC can't be that bad... I'll test it without though. Edit: Just tried with NOTHING checked in the startup tab, and the mouse still experienced long delays. I don't think ESET, Steam, or CCC have an affect.