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General discussion

How long does it take for your computer to boot up?

Jun 15, 2007 4:14AM PDT

Get out your stopwatches. How long does it take for your computer to boot up?

* Less than a minute (What's your secret sauce?)
* 1 to 2 minutes (Not bad. Any tips?)
* 3 to 4 minutes
* 5 to 6 minutes
* I can mow my lawn and return, and it will still be loading.
* Other (Please specify.)

Discussion is locked

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Boot up 1min45sec
Jun 15, 2007 10:49PM PDT

hmm not to much stuff on my tool bar. Also I find that defargmenting hard drives in a reqular schedule seems to work.

Jon Frodo

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Boot UP poll
Jun 15, 2007 11:20PM PDT

I build my own PC's and there are couple of things I do when I build them so that the machine is always quick. (1) First is build the machine with 2 hard drives. Install the operating system on drive 1 and place the programs on the second drive. (2) Partitioning the drive to a smaller size instead of these huge sizes today, helps a lot! It make defraging the drive much quicker without long waits and it allows better organization of the drive and my data. The smaller partitions gives me extra drives, where I can "ghost" the drive and should disaster strike, get back to speed quickly - without worrying too much about lost data. This is because the documents/ photos / spreadsheets are not stored on drive same drive as my OS or program files.

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About a minute...
Jun 15, 2007 11:24PM PDT

Well, my brand new Dell e1505 with it's core duo processor takes about a minute to get ready for me. It has vista premium, so I think that is pretty good.

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Boot up
Jun 15, 2007 11:33PM PDT

Running XP on an HP laptop with AMD 3200+ 797Mhz, 512M RAM with slow 80Gb HD. It takes a good 5 minutes until it is usable due McAfee On-Access Scanner doing it's job. I'd like it to start a bit faster but I'm not willing to upgrade it, replace it, or turn off the On-Acess Scanner. Once it's ready, it does fine with browsing, MS Office and even PhotoShop CS. It's a little pokey but the xbright screen is top-notch. I'm tinkering with a duo-core IBM laptop with 2Gb RAM and Vista provided to my by my employer. It isn't much faster from a cold start, (McAfee Scanner again) and Vista still seems half-baked. My 2 year old, single core, 2GB RAM, XP work desktop machine is the only one that gets the McAfee Scanner out of the way in short order. Haven't done a real investigation why but I'm guessing its all about HD speed.

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Turn it off
Jan 16, 2011 12:26PM PST

Turn the scanner off at bootup and set it to scan your computer once a week when it's on but you're not using it. You will still be protected and have a MUCH faster boot time.

Doing a virus scan for every boot is a waste of time.

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I know too well
Jun 16, 2007 12:20AM PDT

I have a macpro and a macbook both of which go from cold to work ina minute of less. The Windows machine I got from emachines that I use as a server takes at least three minutes to start. It has all this junk on it at startup that is nearly impossible to get rid off.

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> 45 Seconds -
Jun 16, 2007 12:38AM PDT

Minutes! Ya Gotta Be Freaking Kidding Me!What Kind of Bloatware are you using? Hey Linux users, how long for oyu/
Win 2000K/, SP4, rollup 5, Athlon 2400 (32bit) 43 seconds cold, 15 seconds stand-by, 26 seconds hibernate mode. Oh, by the way this is a DUAL BOOT configuration with Win 98SE with a total of 6 drives. Boot Drive is 4 year old IDE WD 7,200 rpm 8 meg Ram. My old 34 gig WD SATA Raptor took 32 seconds.

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Less than a minute and 2 minutes
Jun 16, 2007 12:54AM PDT

My iMac boots up in less than a minute and my laptop with Windows XP takes 2 minutes to boot up. WinkGunilla

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computer boot time
Jun 16, 2007 12:59AM PDT

the omly time my computers boot up is when updates/maintenance are performed as they never shut down.

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one minute 14 seconds
Jun 16, 2007 1:07AM PDT

XP Home Edition, Spybot 14-spyware, Avast-antivirus, IDM downloader, Fram XP Pro-memory. Memory 1 gig, Athlon AMD 1.9 gh. After countless cross testing of programs, I now have had no problems with these start up program combination.

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Linux
Jun 16, 2007 1:39AM PDT

with Kubuntu it takes around 30 secs, 20 if booting to terminal, <10 secs if booting from hibernate. xp, well its been gone from my machines too long to remember boot time.

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Well under a minute from cold boot
Jun 16, 2007 1:50AM PDT

I have an iMac. Eat your heart out, Vista user!

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1-2 Minutes
Jun 16, 2007 2:40AM PDT

I am running XP Pro SP2, 33 running processes and a 1-2 minute reboot from shutdown to complete restart. I never shut the machine down so, I have not checked it from a dead stop!
Keep it clean and shinny using the combination of: Auto Windows Update, AVG7.5, AdAware SE, Spybot S&D, SpywareBlaster, Ashampoo And Registry First Aid. All were downloaded from CNET Programs pages.
I use Windows Messenger, as, I have found that Yahoo Messenger and some other messenger programs use quite a few more resources than WinMessenger! Also, they seem to be tracking my use of their messenger programs. So, I uninstalled them and things are much smoother now!
rocket43

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Long Boot Up
Jun 16, 2007 3:11AM PDT

Ever since I installed Norton 360, it takes about 15 minutes to settle down where I can use it. I like the Norton programs, but this is a lot slower than it used to be. Normally, even on my four-year-old computer, it takes only a few minutes.

I'm thinking of reformatting my drive and reloading everything which I do once or twice a year to get rid of the crap.

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1:40
Jun 16, 2007 4:34AM PDT

It takes me one minutes and 40 secs. from the time I push the power button until everything loads is 1:40. I have 2.5 GB of RAM I think that has alot to do with it. I also have no programs in startup except norton virus and ZoneAlarm. I have seen a huge differance from 512MB to 2.5 GB of ram. I think that is the best thing I did for my PC is upgrade my ram. I prob. should have only bought 1 GB of ram not 2 GB because I dont use all of it but I seen a huge differance once I did. I'm running AMD Atholon XP 3200+ 2.21 GHZ on XP. Hope this helps.

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Upgraded Mac G4 is responsive
Jun 16, 2007 6:02AM PDT

I have found that like other Macintosh owners in this forum, my G4 tower takes about a minute to fire up. It has a 1.2 Ghz CPU, 1.12 Gb memory and 1.5 Gbs internet. While I am tempted to purchase a new duo processer Macintosh, this older machine is dependable and plenty fast enough for my needs.

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Less than a minute :^)
Jun 16, 2007 8:15AM PDT

Maybe it's time to switch to a less bloated OS. My Amiga works just fine and boots in under a minute :^)

These windoze boxes seem to get slower as the processor speed and memory increase. Eventually, they won't boot at all. Is this at all related to approaching the speed of light?

Jaeson K.

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45-50 seconds
Jun 16, 2007 9:57AM PDT

equip: asus p5w dh, 2g ram, pent D, asus x1900xtx, 2 seagate 120g
sata, Geniatech hdtv card - cable to monitor tv.
startup - 5: 1-I dont know whatit is 1-video 1-HPmgr 2-tv card
processes - 30 but one is IE6 so I can be here hahaha and one for
task mnager to look at it. mostly drivers CPU usage 7% as I
type this.
I dont run anti-virus - i never go anywhere wierd. ebay yahoo hotmail
and known retail like newegg zip-zoomfly etc.
I use CCleaner everytime I exit my online work and clean the spybots
and int pages. I also use this to watch my Start up list.
I keep the system page file to 5% along with the system reset files
at approx 5 to 8 % :: this stuff is accessed thru start/control panel/system the variouse tabs.
both drives are partitioned in 3. first drive C, D, E, C Is for
windows only - even tho hp corel and others sneek in stuff to the
program folder - the main stuff gets installed on D:
all games go on E: music and camera picture loads go to f and g and all the drive c backups to h:
I try to keep a clean system - and wish I could get rid of some of the stuff in the task bar box on the right - there is stuff there that
has even been uninstalled. I did it once, but forgot how hahahaha.
after doing a MS update I use RegSeeker (download from Cnet) to clean
up after the installs.
since I do all my bill paying/banking online I use CCleaner b4 and
after - usually there is nothing to clean after.
nothing is kept running in the background that is not used. I dont mind waiting the extra 10 seconds for stuff to load. HP is REEaally
bad at this - they keep wanting to insert startup pgms. but thats ok
since I dont use them for anything other then running my printer.
KISS is the key word.
I should probably try to figure out some of the processes that I dont
recognize because the shutdown time is WAY too long - prob 2 min or
better.
hope this helps
ted
Happy

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oops
Jun 16, 2007 10:01AM PDT

forgot to mention I run XP NOT vista
and the 45-50 is from the on switch to ready to click on anything.

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17 seconds
Jun 16, 2007 10:25AM PDT

I use a Mac G5 powerbook running OSX. It takes 17 seconds for a cold startup to the time I can start running apps.

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Boot time 1min 25 seconds.
Jun 16, 2007 10:33AM PDT

Now that was a reboot... I hit the reboot button it shut down w/in 11 seconds. At 55 seconds I had the choose user option (I have my everyday ID and a work ID) and I had my full desktop on this ID at 1 min 25 sec.

Was I supposed to turn it completely off and time it? Oh... that reminds me... uhhhmmm I was cleaning up my pooter cos it's a Dell.... and they load it with bunches of things you don't need and then I added my own load of stuff... aaaannnnddd it wouldn't let me do a wipe... aka I inserted the Windows disk and turned it off and turned it back on and the booger kept stopping and telling me to avoid damage to my disk it was aborting the Windows load. The point being, now I have this annoying option when I boot asking me if I want to Load Windows XP Pro or weather I want to install Windows. Anyone know how to get rid of that... I assume it has something to do with saving the files to a temp file somewhere when I was trying to reload winders. anyways! Much fun computing!

~Wendy

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New XP over Dell
Jun 16, 2007 11:16AM PDT

If it didnt let u install xp and you are getting that annoying msg,
what happened is - the start of the install set this msg in case u had
to go potty hahahaha anyway - when u next get the msg insert your
xp disk and let it install.! ? !
that should take care of it. if you are trying to do a clean/new
install then say no to the part where it want to know if you want 2
operating systems - and let it wipe whats there and put itself in
the C: spot.
think that should cover it ? ?
ted
Happy

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I may have the record....
Jun 16, 2007 2:19PM PDT

..at about 15 minutes !
I can usually restart, take a shower, dry off and come down just in time to see my XP machine ready.
It takes about 4.5 minutes until I hear that Windows "welcome chime".
At 6 minutes my desktop icons are loaded and the taskbar looks ready.
At about 10-12 minutes the HD light slows down.
At 15 minutes I am ready to ROCK! wOOt !

I run all the regular security measures: anti-virus, Adaware, anti-spyware. I do regular Defraging, and Ccleaner, ect... I have adjusted MSCONFIG to just a handfull of startup items.
After the 15 minutes are up, there are 38 processes in the taskmanager.

Daily operation seem fast enough.
Don't know what the lag is.
I have WinXP, Pentium4 (2.66), 1.5 GB RAM, AVG antivirus

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At most 50 seconds...
Jun 16, 2007 4:39PM PDT

Mine is a 3 year old machine running Windows XP SP1 (for some reason I never upgraded to SP2), 256 RAM, a Pentium P4 2.4 Ghz Processor, 80GB HDD and no grahics card.
The secret juice lies in my never ending quest to reduce the number of processes running in the background to less than 25.
I once attended a CNET Class on How to Speed Up your PC which really helped out a lot.
Also, Registry Mechanic speeded it up a few seconds.
When I used to have Norton Security Suite 2005, the boot up times would be higher. But after I replaced it with AVG Free and ZoneAlarm Free, I did experience faster boot ups.

Thanks,
Abhishek alias "Dexter", Mumbai, India.

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Less than a minute
Jun 16, 2007 4:44PM PDT

I use RAID0. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a setup usually only found on servers when two hard drives are run together and the data is striped, so for each two bits that need retrieval, each hard drive must only retrieve one bit.

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Look at more than processes
Jun 16, 2007 5:13PM PDT

My computer starts fairly quickly, never estimated the exact time -
(One point of uncertainty is this: once the user logs in, there is still a wait while files start. Does this count as boot time?)
I reduced my processes to have only around 42 after startup.
I want to offer a tip which is slightly advanced, but one that should help most users. I, like most pc owners, have one serial and one parallel port on the back of my PC. These ports are mostly for "legacy" devices - most newer devices either use USB or Firewire ports. Few recent devices use serial or parallel ports, so they aren't of use to most of us. However, keeping these legacy ports enabled requires "Interupt Requests", using system resources. If you doubt that you will ever use the serial and/or parallel ports, it is worth DISABLING THEM throught either the device manager or BIOS. (You usually press F2 or F1 as soon as the PC starts to access the BIOS.) I found a significant performance gain from disabling these ports.
Another similar improvement can be gained by using a USB mouse and keyboard and disabling the older PS2 ports.
Beware though, that if some day you should somehow need these ports, you will have to enable them.

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Under a minute?
Jun 17, 2007 12:14AM PDT

I'm not sure what I'm doing right, but my machine boots up from completely off to desktop (and the ability to run apps) in under 30 seconds using XP Pro SP2.
Don't think I have any out of the ordinary hardware:
2.93GHZ Core 2 Duo
EVGA 680i SLI
GeForce 8800GTX
2GB Corsair Dominator C4
250GB Seagate SATA II HDD

The same machine with Vista takes about 50s.

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I am skeptical....
Jun 17, 2007 1:19AM PDT

...of all these low times. Under 1 minute ? From OFF until Apps are ready to be run ? Are these the PC's you use every day ? Or just special high-end gaming rigs ?

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how to speed up your system for free
Jun 17, 2007 3:18AM PDT

Some of the faster times listed are for gaming systems, restarts, or restarts from hibernation mode. MACs really do start up in 20 seconds or less, from a cold, power off startup. But I have a compaq presario running xp pro with a 1.79 Ghz AMD processor and 512MB of memory that boots up cold in under a minute too. Here's how I do it:

streamline the startup list:
get rid of unnecessary processes: factory-installed spyware, extra toolbars, system hooks, apps you don't use, windows messenger, and especially anything from yahoo or myspace

Use mozilla firefox instead of internet explorer

Download windows xp manager (or vista manager if applicable) and use it to clean up junk files, your system's registry (the registry defrag option alone will cut your startup time by 20%), and other tweaks that are available.
http://www.yamicsoft.com

run ccleaner

use the run function and type chkdsk.exe /r
you'll have to restart

defrag your HDD as many times consecutively as it takes to consolidate all your files into one or two large groups with no small gaps (large gaps are ok), usually 3-5 times in a row

I use ghost to restore my HDDs on my desktop system every week after I make a backup of downloads and other files. It starts up vista ultimate in 35 seconds, but ghost costs $70.

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ghost useage
Jun 17, 2007 6:04AM PDT

I tried it once - to copy my c: to g: exact same size partition and
it would not do it ' not enuf room on dest. disk '
so uninstld and - now that I think about it I cant remember
what I did with it hahaha
ted
Happy