Boot Speed and SuperFetch? Vista Tips Discuss Boot Speed and SuperFetch? in the Windows Vista forums; I remember one of the selling points with XP was that it would boot a lot faster than 98. In some early speculation it was hinted it would be almost ...

[triumph]

I remember one of the selling points with XP was that it would boot a lot faster than 98. In some early speculation it was hinted it would be almost instant or close to it.

As we all know XP boots as slow as any windows OS has ever booted. (except a corrupted disk NT machine).

Now I hear tail that Vista might offer superior boot speeds, and even has a mechanism called superfetch to preload programs and speed things up. Is there going to be any noticeable difference in boot time from someone going from XP to Vista or is it again all hot air?

[W.Harbaugh]

I don't know what you're on about...my computer boots in under a minute and a half...and it's 2-3 years old.....amd 64 bit 3000+ baby :-P........hmmm

[triumph]

I wish my computer booted in a minute and a half. From the time I boot until I am actually at a desktop where it is not loading any programs I am looking at 5 minutes or more.

Sure it gets into windows fairly fast, but then it loads everything in and before it is functional has to be 5 minutes. I hate it.

[sen428]

I think that the Beta isn't going to be able to give accurate data for boot times. Once the full version is done you'll be able to get better results.

Maybe time for some new hardware too. What is Vista running on?

[ninikins]

My boot time is about a minute and a half and my machine is over 4 years old. I doubt Vista will make much difference really, not to me anyway.

[W.Harbaugh]

This is what appeals to me about OSX from Apple, it defragments 24/7 so the hard drive never needs to be reorganised...it speeds up booting time so much.

[sopaman]

Originally Posted by W.Harbaugh

This is what appeals to me about OSX from Apple, it defragments 24/7 so the hard drive never needs to be reorganised...it speeds up booting time so much.

Yes, I have had some experience with OS X and it seems to boot up quicker than anything I have used for years. That being said, XP can be quite fast but only on a fairly new machine, in my experience - like all Microsoft products, it is a little bloated and is only really a pleasure to use on up to date hardware - clearly designed to keep hardware manufacturers in business

I don't really expect Vista to be any different - even though it might include some features to speed up boot times, I suspect that in reality these benefits are likely to be counterbalanced by the inevitably increased complexity/size of the new OS. At least that is what history teaches us.....

[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.

[ninikins]

and what's the best thing to do when it does slow down due to sowtware etc? defragging? emptying and re-installing?

[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.