What is the fastest Windows can load?

[grooble]

Hi, i was thinking to myself how computer speeds havn't really changed in my own personal experience. As hardware performance increases, so do the demands software places on it, and you're back where you started.

What sort of system can load Windows XP in somthing like 2 or 3 seconds, or even 1 second? What are the bottlenecks preventing such a fast time? I know there has to be a second or two to allow users to enter the bios, but other than that, whats the fastest XP Pro could start up?

Grooble

 

[Mik3y]

its not the cpu that will allow it to load windows in 1-2 seconds. its teh hard drive. so far, the fastest way of doing it would be to utilize ram harddrive. i forget who makes it, but the drive is 16gb each and has instant boot up after a couple seconds for the bios. other then that, it takes 3-4 min to reformat the harddrive. i dont know how fast a 15,000 rpm raptor loads, but the fastest i know of goes like 25 seconds. computer speeds have changed dramatically, but as we all know it, the harddrive is the slowest and one of the most crucial parts to a computer.

 

[Tiamat]

From teh second I hit "Restart" from windows the the second the hour glass disappears from my screen after windows as rebooted is 34 seconds. It was 28 seconds before I put in Norton Systemworks, Office XP, and Service Pack 1

 

[CraigRT]

hard drive is entirely the bottleneck. any modern CPU could handle windows loading that quickly. just the hdd being the bottleneck for the most part.

 

[DaNorthface]

you can delete the prefetch folder in windows and it'll load in 1 second..

 

[PhoenixOrion]

Originally posted by: DaNorthface
you can delete the prefetch folder in windows and it'll load in 1 second..

Any drawbacks deleting this folder?

 

[Mik3y]

lol

 

[PhoenixOrion]

Originally posted by: Mik3y
lol

avatar change?

 

[Mik3y]

yep, i like to change my avatar once in a while. i guess i'm just a cool guy now!

 

[PhoenixOrion]

I have a friend but haven't asked him what he has done....

2 seconds for bios reads and then 2 seconds for win xp settings and its up and running.

i know he runs an xp 2100+, 9800 pro, 1 gig corsairs and 3 small/old hard drives.

anybody know of techniques for 4 second bootup?

 

[tofu]

Originally posted by: PhoenixOrion
I have a friend but haven't asked him what he has done....

2 seconds for bios reads and then 2 seconds for win xp settings and its up and running.

i know he runs an xp 2100+, 9800 pro, 1 gig corsairs and 3 small/old hard drives.

anybody know of techniques for 4 second bootup?

i call shenanigans

 

[PhoenixOrion]

Clearing prefetch folder and using microsoft's bootvis tool does the trick.

 

[Zap]

My Pentium M notebook comes out of hibernate (to disk) in under 10 seconds.

 

[zephyrprime]

A multiprocessor or hyperthreading setup may help. As I recall, XP has multithreaded loading.

 

[MrK6]

Set up fast loading in system properties. Just hit the advanced Tab, turn off OS detect if oyu only have one OS, click the edit and set timeout to 0, get rid of memory dumps and clear those 3 boxes. My system cold boots in 14sec (I'll double check) with 2 passes of the bar at the XP load and bam, there's the desktop.

 

[RobCur]

patient is virtue, what's the rush???

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: tofu

Originally posted by: PhoenixOrion
I have a friend but haven't asked him what he has done....

2 seconds for bios reads and then 2 seconds for win xp settings and its up and running.

i know he runs an xp 2100+, 9800 pro, 1 gig corsairs and 3 small/old hard drives.

anybody know of techniques for 4 second bootup?

i call shenanigans

I'll second that!! :roll:

I have a SCSI RAID HBA, which has it's own BIOS that boots after the system BIOS does.

From the moment the SCSI HBA BIOS clears to a clean WINXP desktop with no hourglass is 22-24 seconds. I've timed it many times. Dunno why it varies. I do have a few things startup at Startup. MBM, F@H, etc.

I have 2 x 15k RPM SCSI drives, RAID 0, 1GB ram

 

[magratton]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
A multiprocessor or hyperthreading setup may help. As I recall, XP has multithreaded loading.

I can directly confirm that a dual xeon 2666 w/2GB RAM and Seagate Cheetah 15K SCSI HD loads windows xp (with all sorts of anti-virus, spyware, office, etc stuff loaded) in about 3 seconds (at least to the click on which user to login in as screen). This is with no modifications to windows itself. The bios and scsi controller takes about 2-3x that.

 

[DaNorthface]

Originally posted by: PhoenixOrion

Originally posted by: DaNorthface
you can delete the prefetch folder in windows and it'll load in 1 second..

Any drawbacks deleting this folder?

it's really just cheating.. cuz then your apps will load slower in windows. But it's good to clear the prefetch folder once in a while to get rid of all the junk you don't need

 

[carlosd]

My WD SE load windows in 4 seconds after a clean instalation.
My raptor loads windows in 3 seconds or less full windows instalation.

 

[sisooktom]

Originally posted by: carlosd
My WD SE load windows in 4 seconds after a clean instalation.
My raptor loads windows in 3 seconds or less full windows instalation.

*cough* BS *cough*

 

[Mik3y]

Originally posted by: sisooktom

Originally posted by: carlosd
My WD SE load windows in 4 seconds after a clean instalation.
My raptor loads windows in 3 seconds or less full windows instalation.

*cough* BS *cough*

i'm startin to catch the same exact cold u just got!

 

[PhoenixOrion]

anybody played around with microsoft's bootvis tool?

 

[DaNorthface]

Originally posted by: sisooktom

Originally posted by: carlosd
My WD SE load windows in 4 seconds after a clean instalation.
My raptor loads windows in 3 seconds or less full windows instalation.

*cough* BS *cough*

what's bs about it?? He's talking about the time it takes for it to load where the blue bars roll across the screen. Mine does it in 4 seconds when it's not a clean install..

 

[imported_theEman]

Loading Windows isn't from the blue bars to the log on screen, it's from nothing to the log-in screen .