What makes a computer boot faster?

arcenite

Lifer
Dec 9, 2001
10,660
7
81
I am not even sure why I am answering this but, it all depends on if there are any bottlenecks present. Assuming no bottlenecks (64mb of ram, a 1000rpm hard drive, etc...) In other words... assuming your computer was build in the last few years...

The speed of the hard drive generally has the most influence on the speed that the computer boots up.

The processor has a bit to do with boot time as well, but not nearly as much. I only know this for a fact from measuring boot times from my stock 2.0 speeds and then at 2.5 speeds.

The RAM has very little to do with it unless, like I said, you have very little of it in the first place.
 

b0mbrman

Lifer
Jun 1, 2001
29,470
1
81
Originally posted by: Safeway
Umm, the amount of stuff needed to load is the main component.

That's what I would think is the most efficient way of reducing boot speeds...
 

hypn0tik

Diamond Member
Jul 5, 2005
5,866
2
0
I usually find that the firewall takes the longest to load followed by my AV. Everything else boots up pretty much instantly.

But yes, I'd have to agree with HD speeds.
 

labgeek

Platinum Member
Jan 20, 2002
2,163
0
0
Originally posted by: arcenite
I am not even sure why I am answering this but, it all depends on if there are any bottlenecks present. Assuming no bottlenecks (64mb of ram, a 1000rpm hard drive, etc...) In other words... assuming your computer was build in the last few years...

The speed of the hard drive generally has the most influence on the speed that the computer boots up.

The processor has a bit to do with boot time as well, but not nearly as much. I only know this for a fact from measuring boot times from my stock 2.0 speeds and then at 2.5 speeds.

The RAM has very little to do with it unless, like I said, you have very little of it in the first place.


Bull...

I'm not sure why you're answering it either...

64MB of RAM will grind you system to a halt if you can even get it to boot.

XP Pro Requirements
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)

Edit - and a "1000rpm hard drive" - WTF? Where the he!! have you been? laptop = 4200, old slow drives = 5400, standard desktop drive = 7200, WD raptor = 10,000, decent scsi drives = 15,000
 

Injury

Lifer
Jul 19, 2004
13,066
2
81
Originally posted by: labgeek
Originally posted by: arcenite
I am not even sure why I am answering this but, it all depends on if there are any bottlenecks present. Assuming no bottlenecks (64mb of ram, a 1000rpm hard drive, etc...) In other words... assuming your computer was build in the last few years...

The speed of the hard drive generally has the most influence on the speed that the computer boots up.

The processor has a bit to do with boot time as well, but not nearly as much. I only know this for a fact from measuring boot times from my stock 2.0 speeds and then at 2.5 speeds.

The RAM has very little to do with it unless, like I said, you have very little of it in the first place.


Bull...

I'm not sure why you're answering it either...

64MB of RAM will grind you system to a halt if you can even get it to boot.

XP Pro Requirements
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)

I ran XP just fine on a laptop with a whopping 70 some megs of ram (I have NO clue how you get 70 something in a laptop.)

Turn off enough of the stupid junk that XP turns on by default and it you can run it on about 50-60 MB of ram no problem.

Good thing I only used it for taking notes and browsing the internet while I was at school.
 

Byte

Platinum Member
Mar 8, 2000
2,877
6
81
Hard drives make more of the difference. With a 15k RPM drive you can boot XP in about 15 seconds, with a ram drive it will boot about 50% faster, which is not bad. I usually just put the comp in standby to get about a 3 second boot for my main system. I do that for my laptops too, but the throddling seems to kill it sometimes or i have too much junk open (it probably leaks from browsers like firefox) and can take up to 10 seconds for XP to get back on (this is with all the laptops i've had, P4s, XPS2s, high end stuff). Proc/RAM gets to a plateau so it won't be much of a difference of say 2GHz/256MB vs 3GHz/512MB. You can use BootVIS to analyze whats taking up all that time also.