Windows 7 does not boot faster

[kemical]

Windows 7 does not boot faster

Vista is actually quicker
By Link Removed - Invalid URL
Thursday, 8 October 2009, 10:41



SYSTEMS EXPERTS with stop watches have poured cold water on Microsoft's claims that its Windows 7 operating system boots up faster than Vista.
The Vole has been marketing Windows 7 on the claim that it can boot up quicker than Vista.
However according to Link Removed, which flogs PC tune-up software called System Mechanic, Windows 7 takes a minute and 34 seconds to become usable, whereas Vista takes only a minute and 6 seconds.
This tallies with our experience with Windows 7 too. It can take a long time for network cards to activate and since you can't get onto the net straight away you still end up going and making a cup of coffee while the machine boots up.
Iolo said that most measurements were based on the time it took the desktop to appear. In Windows 7 this is much faster and can be about 40 seconds. However Windows 7 is not actually completely usable at that point.
It decided to trip its stop watches on the time it takes Windows 7 to become fully usable "with CPU cycles no longer significantly high and a true idle state achieved".
Windows still gets slower and slower as time goes on, apparently. Iolo found that a three-month-old machine can take up to a minute longer to boot, or 2 minutes and 34 seconds.
Windows 7 did outperform Vista at the three-month and six-month marks. But it "trailed the older version significantly" in its earlier boot-up tests.
Iolo plans to release more details on its findings and methodology next week. µ

Link Removed - Invalid URL

It boots fast enough for me..

 

[kemical]

When I saw how fast you guys were booting I thought I'd take a look and see what was being loaded up on my system... After a little bit of tweaking I've improved the time to under a minute.. (See screenshot)

 

[tblount]

Looks good... where are your desktop icons though? I thought I might find some new porn sites.. haha

 

[epk1950]

Thats a cool program kemical, i managed to get 25 sec with it.

 

[kbz1960]

I feel bad, I'm slow. I was talking beta of bootracer.

 

[fjgold]

I feel bad, I'm slow. I was talking beta of bootracer.

I'm using the beta of BootRacer. Only issue is BootRacer insists on running every boot regardless of settings.
Easy fix though either uninstall BootRacer of uncheck the entry for it shown in the Sysinternals "AutoRuns" program.
Autoruns is a nice little free program created by Mark Russinovitch and part of a suite of similar low footprint apps
he sold to MS when he went to work for them a couple of years ago.
MS is offering them for free.
Autoruns shows you your apps and such that start with Windows and allows you to safely disable them.

Autoruns for Windows

All the apps from Mark don't need install. Just un-zip to a safe location and create a shortcut to the executable.

Process Explorer is another great app from Mark.

Process Explorer

Task manager on steroids.

Place the shortcut, set for minimumize, in your startup folder and it will appear as a little graph in you system tray
on Windows start.
Shows CPU usage and clicking on it shows all the processes running on your machine.

Right clicking a process offers a link to information about the process online.

Of course you probably already know about Mark's work but maybe others here don't.

 

[kbz1960]

Yes I have used those programs before and have heard of him. Pretty cool.

 

[epk1950]

fjgold I just disabled it at services.msc then enable it w/e running it.

 

[fjgold]

Used BootRacer beta 2.0

Here's mine. This is triple-boot - Vista x86, Windows 7 x86, Windows 7 X64. AV is OneCare on Vista & Avast on the Windows 7s. (I have MSE on my virtual Vista & XP machines). Gadgets are included & WL Messenger (Auto Sign-in)/Today; Vista - no Today & WL Messenger opens but, w/out Auto Sign-in.

The 7s are still RCs. My RTMs have not arrived quite yet.

Win7 x64:
Log on - 28 secs.
Time to Desktop - 97 secs.

Win7 x86:
Log on - 25 secs.
Time to Desktop - 85 secs.

Vista x86:
Log on - 64 secs.
Time to Desktop - 196 secs.

Only a slight differential between Vista & Windows 7!

There is certainly other background items, like Skype & more loading @ start-up on all 3. Can't try it on XP as my XPs are only virtual ergo a meaningless comparision.

Cheers,
Drew

A slight difference, surely you jest. LOL

What I find interesting here is the difference between 32 bit and 64 bit Win 7.
Not much difference.

I have only installed the 64 bit RC experimentally (when the RC hit the streets) and I did notice a slight difference. Although I have a 64 bit machine
at the time I tried the 64 bit Wi 7 I found some hardware drivers to be unavailable.

I'm sure that will not be an issue with the final but since I'm planning on purchasing the OEM version of Win 7 Home Premium I have to make a choice at time of purchase.
My understanding is that the OEM version will only be available in either 32 bit or 64 bit versions.

While I'm no stranger to 64 bit computing, my 2 Ubuntu (Hardy and Intrepid) distros that I'm multibooting on this drive are 64 bit, I don't see any advantage to purchasing and installing 64 bit Win 7.

I have 4 GB of DDR2 ram installed and without a chipset upgrade, 3 GB is all I can use regardless of the OS bitness.
This is a notebook so that isn't going to happen.
Surprisingly Acer made the processor upgradeable (my machine originaly had a 1.8 GHz Core Duo, I upgraded to the 2 GHz Core 2 Duo (merom) when it became available).
The original processor wasn't 64 bit.
Swapping the processor was a snap.

Although the processor is 64 bit the chipset/BIOS only sees 3 GB or so.

This situation is acceptable to me because although I can only use about 3 GB of ram it is in the form of two identical
2 GB sticks. If I were to install a 2 GB and a 1 GB stick for the same 3 GB usable ram it would not be able to run in synchronous Dual Channel mode.

3 GB synchronous Dual Channel is quicker than 3 GB asynchronous Dual Channel.

 

[tblount]

I did a few more tweaks that shows better results... 20 seconds average.
Humm maybe my image is too big.. it won't attach.