Why does my XP take so many 'slides' to boot?

[Craig321]

Hi,

Today I was trying to sort out my sister's partner's ATI drivers & some other stuff.

I noticed that it boots in about 5 and a half slides, the only slow-down being is the fact that he has quite a lot on startup. Specs: ATI 9200, Intel P4 3.0GHZ, 1GB 3200 RAM, no special hard drive setup or anything.

My Dad's computer (3.4GHZ, 1.5GB RAM, some ATI graphic card), also no special hard drive setup. It boots in 4 and a half slides... the only slow-down is also the fact he has a lot to run on startup.

Now my PC:

Core 2 Duo E6600
WD 5000AAKS (~15mb/s+ faster than the hard drive in my Dads PC)
2GB GeIL 6400 4-4-4-12
Gigabyte P35-DS4
BFG 8800GTX 768MB

It takes 13 slides, but is quicker to full boot as it is, of course, faster and I have less stuff on startup.

My old PC is also around 13 slides (similar specs to my Dads PC).

My brothers PC is a similar spec to my old PC as well, his also does around 13 slides.

Every build I have done has ended up taking roughly 13 'slides' to boot, it's the same case with my brother.

So, has anyone got any idea why a PC that's less than half the speed of mine takes less 'slides'?

The only reason I can think of now is the fact that me and my brother have NVIDIA cards. My Dad and sister's partner have ATI cards... would NVIDIA drivers really add ~8 slides to bootup?

EDIT

Also, my PC and my brothers PC have a lot less 'rubbish' installed than my Dads and my sister's partner's PC (my Dads XP build is nearing on 3-4 years now, mine usually don't last 8 months ). So, in theory, our PCs should boot faster

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[Craig321]

I take around 8-10 slides too, running a 7600gt.

I'd assume its down to the hard drive speed, as thats where windows is being read from... i may be wrong but thats my educated guess.

My hard drive is quite a bit faster than my Dads and sister's partner, my brothers hard drive is a similar speed to theirs.

Is your name Jacob Billing?

Yes....

His takes like 19, duh

 

[Craig321]

How many USB devices are connected to each machine? I have around 8 devices connected to mine, which almost doubles the time it takes the boot when they are all plugged in.

My Dad and my sister's partner both have quite a few more USB devices than I do.

Yeah could be USB devices. Erm have you disabled any ports you don't need in BIOS? Like serial ports etc? That'll reduce your boot time a bit.

Perhaps give Bootvis a run and see what is slowing your PC down. Until you actually know what is going on you can't really fix it as everything we suggest would just be a stab in the dark.

I'll check that out, thanks

Prob down to drivers or is Norton installed? I found the more updates and the longer the install lasts, the longer it takes to boot.

Nope. Me, my Dad and my brother have PC-cillin. My sister's partner has AVG

EDIT

OK, I just traced the boot + drivers but I'm not 100% sure on how to read the graph... what are the numbers next to the startup processes?

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[Craig321]

Are they in milliseconds?

e.g. explorer(612)

 

[Craig321]

The longest ones to start are the PC-cillin processes (which my Dad has anyway) along with PerfectDisk, Folding, nvidia svc, snagit... the rest are below 1000 (1 second) and none of them are 3000 so it doesn't look like it's any processes slowing the boot down.

Maybe I've got some option wrong in BootVis, but it's only showing my startup processes in the list

Oh hang on! That the process number!

Ah, I see, scrap what I said above then

 

[Craig321]

Yup.

It starts to list my startup processes at '31'... before then it's all blank.

All my startup processes are essential, but I'll see what happens with them all disabled

EDIT

'Slide' count is the same with all startup items disabled.

Craig.

 

[Craig321]

2. Process creates and Disk I/O. For some reason Drive Delay isn't being recorded even though I do a boot+drivers trace.

 

[Craig321]

I scrolled along a bit so you can see most of the processes.

 

[Craig321]

Anything happen when you tick the Driver Delay box on the left?

I'd research all the processes there to see what they are for. Then determine if you need them loading up on a boot up. If not, stop them and perhaps get them started from a batch file you run once you've logged on.

Perhaps check you have the latest IDE/SATA drivers and also latest BIOS?

Nope, the drive delay box is empty.

I have tried a bootup with no startup programs and it reduced it from 13 'slides' to 12 and a half.

I'll check for latest SATA drivers etc, thanks.

Also, I know for sure what everything is that runs in the background and on startup

So your graphic showing a time period of between 31 and 70 seconds? Disk read starts at 31 seconds which is too long.

Have you disabled USB legacy in BIOS? It was the one that caused a long delay before Windows booted up.

Yep, absolutely nothing before 31 seconds

I'll disable USB legacy and see what happens.

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[Craig321]

The half a slide improvement was when I disabled all programs in the startup list.

I'll see what happens if I disable all services this time

 

[Craig321]

Not sure what it's doing. There is a bit of hard drive activity, nothing solidly working though.

 

[Craig321]

BIOS POST (detects RAM, HDDs etc), BIOS then lists my ports and tells me that SMART is on etc. XP boot screen is shown.

I guess the 31 seconds of no activity according to Bootvis is the extra slidey bars I get?

I just removed NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.pf from the Prefetch and it booted in 5 and a half slides, but then took a bit longer to load my startup items... so maybe the difference in 'slides' between mine and my Dads PC is something to do with the Prefetch?

Maybe that also explains why my Dads PC takes quite a bit longer than mine to start all his background programs... although he does have 15-21 icons in the bottom right + a lot more running in the background, so I'm not sure.

 

[Craig321]

23 seconds for slideys.

Maybe that explains the ~30 seconds of nothing before my processes start? Although the slides don't differ that much (8 seconds).

 

[Craig321]

No problem

Hard drive is perfect, coming up to two months old. Still working at full speed and 100% SMART health

Although I don't think it's anything to do with the actual hardware as my old PC (similar spec to my Dads) and my brothers PC (also similar spec to my Dads) also did about 13-16 slides for bootup

 

[Craig321]

I just went and checked my Dads registry Prefetch settings and found the following key was set to 5... default is 3.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher.REG_DWORD.5

The default is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher.REG_DWORD.3

So I decided to set it to 5 on mine.

Slides: 5 and a little (quarter or something)

When it came to loa

EDIT

My keyboard interrupted me by pressing ALT+S

As I was saying... When it came to loading my startup applications it took quite a bit longer... I noticed my Dads and sister's partners startup time at the desktop (when applications load) takes quite a lot longer than mine, I just assumed that was down to them having more on startup.

Not sure what my sister's partner's prefetch settings are on, but I assume the registry value is also 5.

Problem sorted... I think (gonna keep my prefetch settings at default, I'd prefer more slides than longer 'desktop startup' )

Still a little confused as to why my processes only start after 30 seconds, I guess that 30 seconds is driver startup and hardware detection.

Craig.

 

[Craig321]

When my Prefetch settings are the same as my Dads I do only go through 5 and a half slides, but then when it comes to the desktop loading (my background applications) it takes quite a bit longer.

I guess my bootup of ~13 slides is normal for my configuration then

Well, I'm glad I've sorted out why I get a bit over double the slides compared to my Dads PC, but I think I'll stick to having more slides + a quicker desktop boot time

Thanks for your help MarcLister

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[Craig321]

I just did a shutdown & turn on to check and my computer takes about 1.5 slides (I assume you're talking about how many times that blue thing goes from one end to the other)

My computer is far from fast by todays standards too, and it's not like i've done much to Windows

Could you go to Start>regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\ and tell me what the EnablePrefetcher value is please?

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[Craig321]

Mine is 2.

I tried on two earlier and didn't really notice and difference in the bootup time. 2 = prefetch only application & not boot.

nice thread craig, got the same problems myself and still unresolved, registry/services/startup tweaks and nothing seems to make any difference for me.

have the same issue with boovis explorer.exe only kicks in around 30 seconds

Your explorer only kicks in after 30 seconds as in desktop icons etc. don't show?. My bootup is something like this:

With EnablePrefetcher on default (3):
POST
Verify DMI pool data and let me know SMART is still enabled... :p
Do the slideys (about 13-5)
Flash the 'welcome' screen for literally half a second.
Show the desktop (start menu and icons etc. load instantly) - there's no delay in starting explorer.exe (it's usable, but, of course, slow at this point as my startup items are starting)

With EnablePrefetcher on 5:
POST
Verify DMI pool data and let me know SMART is still enabled... :p
Do the slideys (about 5)
Flash the 'welcome' screen for literally half a second.
Show the desktop (start menu and icons etc. load instantly), it's really not usable at this point and my background applications take a lot longer to start.

 

[Craig321]

The prefetch on 5 is apparently a value only for 'advanced' users... not for the average user.

I'll try it on two again and see how it goes.

Thanks,
Craig.