Why are drivers such hogs?

[Fox5]

Seriously, a fresh install of windows, just about any windows, always runs smoothly for me. But even just the installation of all the necessary drivers sometimes slows down the system, and almost always adds a ton of time to the after-boot jitteryness.

I suppose it's the driver control panels that are the cause of this, since Linux does not have the problem, and neither does windows if the autodetected drivers are used. Is it possible to disable the ati/nvidia control panels from starting without losing anything big? I've seen some systems where sound drivers won't load without their tray app and such, and the control panels do provide some useful settings to be tinkered with form time to time.

 

[pcgeek11]

Seriously, a fresh install of windows, just about any windows, always runs smoothly for me. But even just the installation of all the necessary drivers sometimes slows down the system, and almost always adds a ton of time to the after-boot jitteryness.

I suppose it's the driver control panels that are the cause of this, since Linux does not have the problem, and neither does windows if the autodetected drivers are used. Is it possible to disable the ati/nvidia control panels from starting without losing anything big? I've seen some systems where sound drivers won't load without their tray app and such, and the control panels do provide some useful settings to be tinkered with form time to time.

Run msconfig and disable anything that you do not want to start.

easy as pie.

Free CCleaner also has this ability.

pcgeek11

 

[JackMDS]

If you run a laptop with 512MB of RAM it is a problem. Otherwise on any fairly recent computer with 2MB RAM it is negligible.

 

[Fox5]

Pcgeek11 - Sure I could just go through msconfig and disable things, but sometimes functionality (or function at all) relies on certain things booting up.

JackMDS - I disagree. Boot up times get considerably extended on the amount of ram with a fresh install versus having all drivers and tray apps installed. The ATI and Nvidia control panels are quite hogs on their own, and really should have been encouraged to integrate into windows instead of providing 100MB apps to boot up with.

 

[JackMDS]

Drivers implementation is up to the OEM.

They provide (if they opt to) basic drivers to DVD of Windows' install).

Win 7 includes basic drivers for ATI and nVidea that do not have any ad-on.

On the other hand other basic drivers does not lend themselves to any manipulation.

The elaborate drivers are available on ATI and nVidia sites, and it is their business how they create the install.

Beside all the services and programs that are installed at Start through the registry I have 12 entries in my StartUp folder (including the ATI CP).

My computer is middle level previous generation Core2Duo it takes 40 sec to complete boot.

As a regular guy that works for a living, and supports his family, I really do not pay attention (or care) if my computer starts at 30 sec. or 40 sec.

 

[Modelworks]

It isn't that drivers can't be smaller it is that they try to make a application out of the drivers rather than just supplying the files needed to use the hardware.

If you extract drivers and break it down to just what is needed to use the hardware it is usually about 10% of what they install. They have to add startup junk, control panels, background task, update checkers and who knows what else.

For example the nvidia drivers clock in at 88MB or 96MB extracted. Of that about 11MB is the actual driver the rest is control panels, physx interfaces, nview desktop manager, 3d video support,e tc.

 

[Nothinman]

As a regular guy that works for a living, and supports his family, I really do not pay attention (or care) if my computer starts at 30 sec. or 40 sec.

Same here, well minus the family part since I'm single, and I don't reboot enough to really care personally. But that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. People are looking for closer and closer to "instant on" with regards to computers so anything that adds even a second or two to bootup should be looked at and, if possible, fixed.

 

[Fox5]

Same here, well minus the family part since I'm single, and I don't reboot enough to really care personally. But that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. People are looking for closer and closer to "instant on" with regards to computers so anything that adds even a second or two to bootup should be looked at and, if possible, fixed.

It takes Ubuntu less than 30 seconds to boot on my PC, Windows 7 takes closer to 3 minutes by the time it's booted, logged in, and settled down from whatever startup crap happens. Windows 7 was pretty quick on a fresh install (as all windows are), but those startup programs add a substantial amount of time to boot. Nvidia control panel, google updater, microsoft security essentials, and a few other rather essential start-up programs (ok, MSE and nvidia are really the biggest culprits in the slow boot) really make me never want to reboot my computer. Unfortunately, frequent windows updates, and my necessity to work in Linux make rebooting more frequent than I would like.

I would just stay in Linux (which I'm not afraid to shut down, since it boots up again so briskly), but games don't work in Linux, and flash video works poorly.
I avoid shutting down my computer when it's in windows, just because I know it takes a while to boot back up. And there's a 2nd long period after entering my password, so I can't even leave and take a walk or something.
Sleep mode works well, but even to this day I still encounter systems where sleep mode messes up (hardware faults of course, but it makes sleep mode unusable).

My eventual goal is to just get a Phenom II or i7 system, stay in windows 7, and just run linux in a virtual machine full screened (assuming performance is ok, right now it sucks on my core 2 duo, but I assume that's the lack of virtualization instructions). That way whenever I want to switch to windows, all I have to do is pause the virtual machine. Oh, and hopefully I don't have any hardware that stops sleep mode from working. Just recently I had to toss my brand new usb 802.11n adapter because it didn't work with sleep, as well as my new tv card.

 

[Nothinman]

right now it sucks on my core 2 duo, but I assume that's the lack of virtualization instructions

I wouldn't assume that, VT instructions help make VM software simpler but don't help performance that much. In fact, IIRC, VMware had a study that showed VMs running with them to be slightly slower than the software translation VMware was using. But who knows, they probably caught up by now.

VMs on Windows always seems slightly slower and cause more disk I/O than on Linux to me. But maybe things are better with Win7 now.

 

[pcgeek11]

Pcgeek11 - Sure I could just go through msconfig and disable things, but sometimes functionality (or function at all) relies on certain things booting up.

JackMDS - I disagree. Boot up times get considerably extended on the amount of ram with a fresh install versus having all drivers and tray apps installed. The ATI and Nvidia control panels are quite hogs on their own, and really should have been encouraged to integrate into windows instead of providing 100MB apps to boot up with.

You can install video driver etc without the control apps etc just select update driver and point it to the folder with the driver in it. That way you only get the driver and not the crap.

pcgeek11

 

[Fox5]

I wouldn't assume that, VT instructions help make VM software simpler but don't help performance that much. In fact, IIRC, VMware had a study that showed VMs running with them to be slightly slower than the software translation VMware was using. But who knows, they probably caught up by now.

VMs on Windows always seems slightly slower and cause more disk I/O than on Linux to me. But maybe things are better with Win7 now.

VMs seem slower on windows to me too.

But that vmware study was with the 1st gen of VT instructions iirc, which were more about just having hardware virtualization, than actual performance. For the most part, there shouldn't be a difference in performance, but for the few instructions that benefit from hardware virtualization, there should be a big performance difference. IIRC, the code patching vmware uses was something like 1/100th the speed of native, so I'd hope hardware support can speed that up.

 

[Cattykit]

Drivers implementation is up to the OEM.

They provide (if they opt to) basic drivers to DVD of Windows' install).

Win 7 includes basic drivers for ATI and nVidea that do not have any ad-on.

On the other hand other basic drivers does not lend themselves to any manipulation.

The elaborate drivers are available on ATI and nVidia sites, and it is their business how they create the install.

Beside all the services and programs that are installed at Start through the registry I have 12 entries in my StartUp folder (including the ATI CP).

My computer is middle level previous generation Core2Duo it takes 40 sec to complete boot.

As a regular guy that works for a living, and supports his family, I really do not pay attention (or care) if my computer starts at 30 sec. or 40 sec.

True, it is their business to do whatever they want but that doesn't mean everything they do is right. Come on, you can't possibly be that naive to think 'hey, everything they do, they can do it and should do it.' 'I'm fine with it so should everybody' sort of logic is such a.............
I mean, haven't you learned to qustion?

Anyway, slow booting time and bloated registery hasn't been a problem for me as I tightly manage the system; however, I've seen so many cases of decent system taking ages to boot up due to nasty drivers and installers. Such phenomenon is worse on laptops. I just can't believe all those craps that come loaded default.

 

[JackMDS]

Come on, you can't possibly be that naive to think 'hey, everything they do, they can do it and should do it.' 'I'm fine with it so should everybody' sort of logic is such a.............
I mean, haven't you learned to qustion?

Sure I learned to ask questions, and to care about a lot o issues.

With devastated Patients that I dealt with after they suffered from Stroke, or sever Head Injuries.

While I was doing major research with victims of PTSD.

And about countless of important issues in computers, and computing.

But not in Winning due to Boredom that a computer takes 40 sec. instead of 30 (or whatever) to Boot.

 

[Cattykit]

Sure I learned to ask questions, and to care about a lot o issues.

With devastated Patients that I dealt with after they suffered from Stroke, or sever Head Injuries.

While I was doing major research with victims of PTSD.

And about countless of important issues in computers, and computing.

But not in Winning due to Boredom that a computer takes 40 sec. instead of 30 (or whatever) to Boot.

Grocery shopping experience would have taught you a simple lesson: pennies add up. Same rule applies in this case. 30 becomes 40 becomes 50 becomes 60...
How about reading books, doing homework, and studying? Same deal; they all add up. How about medical cases? I'd say it's the same deal unless you only deal with people who got sick or injured due to accidents.

In the world of Windows, it's not the virus that is a main destructive force; rather, it's the bloated crapware. At first, this one application putting crap may be considered as nothing but they add up.

Think about Norton utilites, they were so popluar until people realized it actually slows down the system due to its being goddamn bloated. How about QT, simple google would tell you why there're tons of people who refuses to install QT. How about IE Active-X that used to seem like furture of Internet? Abandoned, when people realized how it makes IE bloated, not to mention its potential security problems. How about Apple's bonjour service? Such examples can go and on and they all add up.

If you don't mind such things, are you one of those people with several lines of toolbars filling half of the browser screen, as well as having tons of useless applications running background?