Vista Slow Boot - Explained

Banjo

Banjo

Banjo

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Joined
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Location
Wolverhampton
Hi all,

I'm running Vista 64-bit on the rig shown in my signature and it's taking upto 4 minutes to start up and get to a usable desktop from being completely powered down.

I've done some research and have got vista set up to show which drivers are being loaded during the startup process (like in safe mode) and also to log the startup to a file (both through msconfig options)

My results are as follows:

+ BIOS POST:
(From pressing power button to beginning boot from hard drive)
Time = ~15 seconds

+ Loading Drivers:
Time = ~5 seconds

----- Now, this is the intersting part! -----
+ Hang at black screen with white text displaying:
Microsoft (R) Windows (R) Version 6.0 (Build 6001: Service Pack 1)
2 System Processors [4096 MB Memory] MultiProcessor Kernel
Click to expand...
Time = 1min 30 seconds

+ Then the screen displays the following for ~5 seconds
Checking file system on C:
The Volume is clean.
Windows has finished checking the disk.
Click to expand...

+ Then it takes 1 or 2 seconds for the welcome screen to flash up then I'm at my desktop just loading startup items like xfire + the sidebar, etc. (which all-in-all may take 20-30 seconds once I'm on desktop before I can start anything)

Now, like I said at the start of this post, this totals at around 4 minutes, which is pretty terrible given the hardware in my pc.

As far as I can tell, the file system check is what's taking up so much of my boot time - probably because I've used 90% (842GB out of the 931GB) of my hard drive.

So, in sight of this, I would like to ask if anyone out there would be able to give me any ideas on how to stop the file system check on startup as it's killing me.

Thank you for reading, sorry that it's such a long post!

-----
Note 1: I have cleaned out my registry using CleanMyPC Registry Cleaner for 64bit windows and had a few reboot cycles since then.

Note 2: I have defragmented my hard drive using Auslogics Disk Defrag before testing.

Note 3: I realise that if I use the sleep function rather than shutdown then I would not have this problem and my PC would be at the desktop in a few seconds, but I overclock... a lot, so fast booting would make overclocking easier.

EDIT: Re-enabled ReadyBoost service after finding out that it is linked to "ReadyBoot" which has speeded up startup to an extent - the old results have been removed in favour of the new ones.
 
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1 Click the Start Button. From the Start menu click Run
2 In the Run dialogue box type: cmd. The command prompt window will now open
3 In the command prompt window type: fsutil dirty query c: (If you have a dual boot system then replace the C: drive letter with the relevant drive letter you have been having problems with). Press Enter.
4 The response from the file system utility will probably be that the disk is 'dirty'
Now type: CHKNTFS /X C: into the command prompt windows and press Enter. (If you have a dual boot system then replace the C: drive letter with the relevant drive letter you have been having problems with). The X parameter, in this case, tells windows not to check the disk in question
5 Re-boot your PC. You should now find that CHKDSK does not run on the selected drive
 
Maybe also get a 2nd drive in there for your data (preferably 2 and raid 1 them) so that your main drive is just for OS, program files and the odd word doc.
 
Hi, any USB devices, if so remove them. I asume it is a fresh install of vista too...
Chris
 
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Checking file system on C:
The Volume is clean.
Windows has finished checking the disk.
Click to expand...

Looks like a hardware problem if it needs to keep checking C: at every boot which can be the hard drive its self or an unstable mobo or failing mobo.
I had numerous errors on new harddrives which was down to the mobo that was on its way out with all errors completely subsiding with a new mobo.
 
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Tried hibernating the machine instead of powering it off? I never shutdown any of my machines, and they only get rebooted to install updates. Whilst it probably won't fix the problem, it might be a useable workaround.
 
Thanks for all the replies :)

So far...

+ Haven't played around with the overclock yet, might do if I have some time, hopefully the overclock isn't causing any problems at startup - I love >4GHz :p...

+ I've disabled all the services that I don't need using the Black Viper (Thanks swinnie) tutorial for Vista 64 SP1. Also - I'd already cut out pretty much all programs from starting at startup through msconfig.

+ Tried "fsutil dirty query c:" that Ratbag mentioned but the drive was shown as not dirty.

+ Ideally I'd get a 2nd drive for data but I've only got two internal 3.5in bays, and my 1TB is so full I probably need a second one else I'll run out of space (again) :(

+ chriscatt - No USB devices apart from mouse + keyboard. It's a pretty old install of Vista, but I've kept everything pretty clean :)

+ lokkers - I'm seeing a good improvement when hibernating over the times when I shutdown - startup, the fastest is just putting the thing into C3 sleep ;)

EDIT: New startup time is 2min give-or-take 10 seconds from pressing the power button to a desktop that's ready to use.

25 seconds - POST
5 seconds - Load Drivers
20 seconds - Black screen with Windows Version info
5 seconds - Black screen with file system check stuff
15 seconds - "Welcome" screen and render desktop
35 seconds - Things loading on the desktop (xfire, sidebar, desktop shortcuts thumbnails refresh, etc.)
=== Total is around 2 mins

Banjo
 
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Banjo said:
+ lokkers - I'm seeing a good improvement when hibernating over the times when I shutdown - startup, the fastest is just putting the thing into C3 sleep ;)
Click to expand...

Hibernating requires space equal to the amount of RAM - i.e. 2GB RAM = 2GB Space taken on your hard drive for hibernation. Sleep is faster.
 
swinnie said:
Hibernating requires space equal to the amount of RAM - i.e. 2GB RAM = 2GB Space taken on your hard drive for hibernation. Sleep is faster.
Click to expand...

Sleep is faster, but stores all your running process in memory in a low power state. Hibernate dumps the contents of memory to disk and restores from that. In the event of a power failure you loose everything if the machine is in sleep mode. I prefer hibernate because I don't like leaving everything on standby (waste of leccy at the end of the day).
 
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