Boot Speed and SuperFetch? Vista Tips Discuss Boot Speed and SuperFetch? in the Windows Vista forums; Originally Posted by dazzlin I go through the startup now and then (using msconfig) and remove anything that isn't essential at startup. A lot of cr@p gets put ...

[triumph]

Originally Posted by dazzlin

I go through the startup now and then (using msconfig) and remove anything that isn't essential at startup. A lot of cr@p gets put there unnecessarily, and without me being aware of it landing there.

I do the same thing. I will go through every once in a while and prune out stuff that is not needed. Still takes me forever. I have so much stuff I use now, that it all just adds up. Trillian, my mediamvp server, netlimiter, and some other stuff and it from when I log into windows until my desktop is usuable is probably 2 minutes or more.

[Gawain]

Originally Posted by dazzlin

In my experience, its not the OS that causes slow boot up time, but all the bits of non-OS software that eventually ends up loading on boot up. I know when I get a brand new machine, its uber-fast at boot up. Eventually, as more and more pieces of software get tacked on to the startup process, it slows down. Can't blame the OS for that.

Dazzlin you're absolutely right! I am fortunate enough to have quite a large pool of resources available to me as a system builder for a UK company - so when I downloaded my Beta 2 of Vista, I decided to build a new PC just for its install.
Now I wanted to use a mid-range spec to emulate the sort of bottom end systems people will be upgrading to Vista from and had some suprising results.

I first installed Windows XP SP2 so I could perform an upgrade to Vista - with no other software installed XP was booting into Windows within 18 seconds!
Upgraded to Vista - Boot time of 47 seconds. Formatted the hard drive to install Vista clean and received a boot time of 32 seconds.

Ok It's only a beta and of course it's more resource intensive, but for the moment (without other 3rd party software factors) we're looking at a double-ish increase in boot speed.

Basic Specs: AMD Sempron 64-bit 3000+ - Maxtor 80GB SATA HDD - 1GB PC3200 RAM - Geforce FX5200 GFX card.

[triumph]

Gawain,

Thanks for doing that testing for all of us. It is depressing to think my boot times will slow down. I guess I need to upgrade my pc now.

[sopaman]

Originally Posted by triumph

Gawain,

Thanks for doing that testing for all of us. It is depressing to think my boot times will slow down. I guess I need to upgrade my pc now.

Welcome to the world of Microsoft upgrades - every major OS release is a boost for the hardware industry as people are forced to upgrade...

Do I sound cynical? Realist, I think.

[MsMcClain]

Some programs give you the option to turn off the cookies. Perhaps you could do that or upgrade your security to let you know when something is trying to download onto your computer. It's a pain in the neck but you get an idea of how much junk is loaded onto your computer every day.