Windows 7 Windows 7 slows to a crawl with 3rd-party apps installed

reghakr said:

I paid $399.00 for this E-Machine complete with a 22" widescreen monitor and if I can find a comparable deal with Windows 7 pre-installed, I'd purchase another one in a heartbeat.

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Kinda makes building your own impractical, doesn't it? Persistence will find ready-made computers for significantly less than one can build an equivalent computer and buy the OS for. I used that procedure to get my one copy of Vista. (Well, at least I got a computer out of the deal)

Analogy is valid, really.

Ed Dixon said:

The truck analogy only goes so far. It’s more like a second truck running right beside us, where we only get some wind backlash.

Stuff parked on a disk that has no startup processing or services is mostly just taking up space. There may be a few more icons and folders, but that part is probably pretty small.

Yes, defrags and clean up checks run longer as more stuff arrives, but that really doesn’t affect start up that much. It is amazing how many programs stick stuff in your startup area. I have a small tool I use every day to track that, and turn most all off.

Ed

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I am not really discussing actual start-up time here, because I think everybody is in agreement that "more stuff takes more time" in this instance. I am discussing the observed general slow down experienced after start-up and not related to start-up itself. It has been my understanding since many years ago that when either a document or application is called for from the harddrive, windows searches the entire drive to make certain that it finds every fragment of that item. (even if the drive is not excessively fragmented, Windows still checks the entire drive) If you have 1 GB "information" on the drive, it requires less time to complete this search to open the item than if you have 100 GB. (some number of nanoseconds is required per kilobyte) This would mean that even if you already (for instance) have "Word" open and wish to open a Word document, it will take longer to do so if you have 100 GB "stuff" on the drive than if you have 1 GB "stuff". Thus, the truck analogy would be valid.

As I mentioned in a previous post in this thread, that is what Prefetch and flash drive memory booster, etc. is supposed to be addressing, but is extremely ineffective by my observation. Granted that once a document is accessed and open, it is in ram and the harddrive "stuff" doesn't affect the speed that it will respond to any input, but the time required to open and close a document or application is affected by how much information is stored on the harddrive.

Is my understanding of this operation not correct?

1 minute and 40 seconds?

I run Vista X64 and have 132 applications installed and boot in 24-26 sec. No offense, but there is something seriously wrong with your system.

Oh and btw, Windows (like any othjer OS) loooooves defragged hard drives.

JDonner said:

1 minute and 40 seconds?

I run Vista X64 and have 132 applications installed and boot in 24-26 sec. No offense, but there is something seriously wrong with your system.

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Boot times vary considerably with different PC hardware. My Gateway system takes 15 seconds before the Gateway logo appears, and then another 3 min or so (XP or W7). My Dell systems start more quickly, but still take 2 min. There is nothing wrong with any of these systems.

Ed

Hi All

For all those concerned with Win 7 RC boot -up times and aftermath.
I visited a site Black Viper's Web Site and downloaded his Windows 7 RC1 Service configurations.
Even if you do not use the information gleaned from this site the number of services listed on start-up should give
you all an idea of what is loaded on start-up and this takes up 500mb and 163 services listed. That is before any apps that add to the start-up time are loaded. It also gives you options to disable services and which are safe etc. I have used the XP 64 bit version and found it beneficial for running that OS. I have yet to use the same for Win 7 as I had other probs but will do so in due course.
Just a thought for those who want steady and consistent start-up times.

Stransky
(Douglas B)

I have installed 106 programs, although not all are 3rd-party programs. the 3rd-party programs are installed to a separate partition. Boot up time has slowed to 1 minute 40 seconds. On my initial "clean" install, boot time was 30 seconds before the icons appeared on the desktop.

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This is what I refer to as Sand Bagging. Yeah, trucks whatever. Fill a trunk with sand bags and see how fast your car will go.

Obviously I am very disappointed and believe Microsoft specs are just for running Windows with no 3rd-party apps installed.

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Yes they are,,,, this is an industry standard. Check all games, every single one of them give recommended and minimum

Min = It will start and run the game. Not well, but hey you get pictures and it didn't crash before it got there.

Recommended = Hey, this is better than Min and more playable, but you should have better specs.

This has been the norm since the day they started putting these specs on the cartons, and I doubt it will never change.
They need to make sure that those with the lowest specs will buy the product. It's the way it is.

However,,, ( i will test later ) I do believe my power off to opening IE/Firefox/Explorer is about 60 sec give or take.

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As for the services thing. (I have not tested this myself) but I have read that the time/framerate/whatever shaved from disabling services is so minimal that it is not worth the effort in Vista/7. And quite honestly, depending on the PC, it wasn't worth the effort in XP either.