How fast is your Windows Vista boot time?

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orion23

Gawd
Joined
Jun 4, 2004
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879
Mine takes 40-45 seconds from the time the Windows Logo first appears. (first bar) to a fully functional desktop with no HD activity.

I only count from that point since other systems will vary depending on the motherboard.

This is the fastest booting time I have ever had (95, 98, MI, XP...)

The only startup applications I have are:

Norton Internet Security 2007
Windows Defender
Logitech Setpoint.

All services are enabled.
 
Last time I bothered to test the boot time, which was a few weeks ago with a Core 2 Duo laptop I had (1.66 GHz, 2GB PC2-5300, 160GB SATA drive), it was just under 22 seconds after a week of usage. Vista will get faster over time, so be patient and it'll get there.

Still nowhere near my 13.4 second boot time with XP though, but then again, I haven't really even begun to start on tweaking Vista for all sorts of performance improvements.
 
I just went back and saw he's running NIS 2007... ugh... yanno, Vista does a much better job of most of the stuff that application suite does, except perhaps AV duties. And it's a lot less resource intensive when doing it, and it doesn't lengthen your boot times either like NIS does, but to each his own I suppose.
 
Mine boots quickly initially. But when it gets to the desktop, it almost "hangs" for a minute 30ish. At that point the security center pops up in the tray (even though it's disabled) and 3 of the 5 gadgets i have pop up and it connects to my network (wireless). Anyone know why that is? But it gets to the desktop in probably 30seconds or less, never timed it.
 
bbz_Ghost said:
Last time I bothered to test the boot time, which was a few weeks ago with a Core 2 Duo laptop I had (1.66 GHz, 2GB PC2-5300, 160GB SATA drive), it was just under 22 seconds after a week of usage. Vista will get faster over time, so be patient and it'll get there.

Still nowhere near my 13.4 second boot time with XP though, but then again, I haven't really even begun to start on tweaking Vista for all sorts of performance improvements.
Click to expand...


I have built / repaired hundreds of pc's and not once had one boot in 13 seconds. EVER!
 
If you're aware of what you're doing, just tell Security Center not to alert you anymore, that way it doesn't waste more time loading that damned Tray icon during the boot process. It's under the options about how Security Center alerts you.

The wireless/network thing is slow for a reason methinks, just how Vista handles it. I've noticed that across multiple builds recently that one of the last things to load and get working is the network access.
 
bbz_Ghost said:
If you're aware of what you're doing, just tell Security Center not to alert you anymore, that way it doesn't waste more time loading that damned Tray icon during the boot process. It's under the options about how Security Center alerts you.

The wireless/network thing is slow for a reason methinks, just how Vista handles it. I've noticed that across multiple builds recently that one of the last things to load and get working is the network access.
Click to expand...

or you can go into msconfig and disable it

my vista boots pretty quick, but once at the desktop it hits the hdd for a few minutes.
 
i do 3-4 swipes and as soon as i hit desktop it takes like 5 seconds to open up something
 
The "hits the hdd for a few minutes" is SuperFetch repopulating RAM with the previous session's cached data sooo... perfectly normal operation, just so folks know.
 
orion23 said:
I have built / repaired hundreds of pc's and not once had one boot in 13 seconds. EVER!
Click to expand...

I've never actually sat with a stopwatch measuring the time taken from power switch press to desktop availability (because I think it's a really stupid and meaningless thing to do) but I do have one Nforce 2 Athlon XP system still in operation which at a guess I'd say wouldn't go too far beyond that. Quickest thing I've ever seen starting up. On the other hand there's another older system in the bungalow out back which my old pensioner Dad uses, and which takes forever to perform the memory check unless you're sitting there ready to tap the 'Esc' key.

Bootup times vary because machines vary, because installation configurations vary, and because installed software varies. Measuring and comparing them is weird!

If it's been turned off you only need to press the power button on the way past as you go to grab breakfast. It ain't a problem if you do that!

Hell? Fancy sitting there watching and waiting! :eek:
 
Well when I got done tweaking it, and here's the hardware breakdown:

Dell Inspiron 4150 laptop
Pentium 4-Mobile 1.7 GHz (not a Pentium-M, it's roughly 5 years old now)
1GB of DDR2700 RAM, not dual channel
80GB 7200 rpm Hitachi hard drive 8MB buffer
XP Professional SP2

After tweaking it, stopping/deleting unnecessary services, and hitting it with Bootvis several times to work out the kinks, the original boot time measured at 43 seconds, the final boot time - and the fastest I've ever seen personally - was 13.4 seconds as measure by Bootvis itself.

During normal usage, it'll boot in under 16 seconds, but that 13.4 second boot time happened on several occasions because people simply refused to believe an XP machine could boot that fast.

Oh how wrong they were... and how nice it felt to put their money in my pocket off our little wager. :D

I've been doing this for entirely too long, I tell ya...

ps
Just to throw it out there, I've build over 5K machines with my bare hands in my years, and that's from the components to the screws to the finished product, OS installed and tuned. Give me the best machine any "boutique" manufacturer can build today - Alienware, Falcon Northwest, VoodooPC, etc - and in 30 minutes I'll have it performing 30% better in most benchmarks, without fail. Too long, I tell ya...
 
It boots faster than XP anyway, but I think I slowed it down by installing the pig slop masquerading as a sound drive, ie., the Asus P5B SoundMax drivers. It's still only about 45 seconds though.

The one thing that I really like is once the desktop is up, it's really up. Not like in XP where you can't click a thing until the programs that sit in your system tray finish loading. And I have nothing in the tray either, just the ATI Control Panel (which no matter how many times I disable it in startup reasserts itself, the SoundMax panel (which I need unfortunately), and PeerGuardian.)

Here's a Vista startup question...can you dump your password once you've created an account with one? I suppose I should not have entered one in the first place, but I wanted to be a good little user and PW my account. But now I'm getting irritated.
 
You can still use the old control userpasswords2 trick to "fix" that if necessary:

Press Windows+R (the Windows key plus the R key) to bring up the Run dialogue. Type:

control userpasswords2 (press Enter)

On the box that appears, highlight the username that you want to autologin without needing to enter the password. Once that name is highlighted, and making sure the checkbox at the top is currently checked (because it should be), and uncheck that box. Then click Apply.

Another window on that dialogue will pop up, asking you to confirm the password for that account. Punch it in, then click OK. Click OK again, and that's it. From that point on Vista should automagically log into that account after a reboot/cold boot.

Hope this helps...

ps
This is just one way to accomplish that task, actually.
 
Uh yeah, the easier way is just go to User Accounts and click the option to "Remove the password for this account," lol...

Why didn't they do it that way in XP?
 
Just finished up a clean install of Home Premium on one of my machines last night, I haven't installed anything other than a few updates and NOD32, and it's right about 40-45 seconds, but I would anticipate a little bit of a speed up over the next week or two.....
 
I think about 20 sec to the login.

Another 20 sec after I log in.

That's excellent compared to XP.

I think one of the biggest improvements came when I dumped Symantec AntiVirus (what a pig it's become) and switched to NOD32. NOD32 loads in NO TIME whatsoever.

I also use some software known for longer initialization times, such as CheckPoint SecureClient. Even that, in it's beta form, loads a good 10 seconds faster than it did under XP.
 
I don't quite understand, but for whatever reason it takes an awful long time to get to the password screen... about 1 - 2 minutes most of the time. The shutdowns are superfast, but booting takes a while....
 
my heathkit takes about 4 hours to boot vista, so i don't turn it off much. aero is kind of disappointing in two colors, but i'll make due for now.
 
lordshado said:
10 second with the vista usb booster mem stick ahahah.

Windows Vista ReadyBoost Enhanced SLC Flash Memory

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820321006

has all boot up info ,no need to access hard drive i won on boot speed
Click to expand...

Uhmmm... actually, using a ReadyBoost device on a machine slows down the boot time considerably because the ReadyBoost cache is created on the USB device at boot time/refreshed/repopulated with content.

It's not a static thing, and everytime you reboot the PC that ReadyBoost cache file on the device has to be recreated and populated with data from the pagefile as it also is being populated.

You might have a system with hardware components that can actually do a 10 second boot - which is hard to believe since I've built SCSI Ultra320 machines with 4 drive RAID 0 setups that still take 12 seconds and that's the fastest boot time I've ever encountered in all my years of building computers - but if you're using ReadyBoost, you're never going to boot to a usable state in 10 seconds.

Just for kicks I redid my desktop PC with a P4 2.4 GHz (533 MHz FSB), 1GB of DDR333 and a 7200 rpm 80GB 8MB hard drive with XP a few days ago, just ran Bootvis in a single optimization pass and it went from 42 seconds to boot down to this:



The popup doesn't show in the screenshot, but it's 15.8 seconds where the box marker is located. Not too shabby, but I can get it lower. :D
 
My XP boot from powerswitch to done is 23 seconds. 165 @ 2.7Ghz, 2G of UTT ram @ 250Mhz 8,2,2,2.0 and 2x 36G raptor raid0. XP pro, pretty run of the mill setup.
 
Yeah, about "rebooting," I only do that when an update demands it. Otherwise, my desktop stays on all the time.
 
whipped out the stopwatch for this one

3 restarts in a row

from the moment i push the power button to sitting at the desktop ready to compute

1st run: 38.59

2nd run: 41.58

3rd pull: 37.25

power button to vista desktop and ready to go takes about 40 seconds
 
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