I've noticed that when the exit windows and start windows sound is enabled ... the system takes a lot of time to boot or shutdown. You can disable these annoying sounds from your control panel -->Sounds and Audio Devices -> Sounds ... and make your system boot and shutdown faster.

Yup, it's true. If you have Windows set to play a sound when you shut down, it will wait for the entire sound clip to play through before shutting down ... which can sometimes be a pain.

Nice! Didn't know about that one.

but how....how do u disable it

but how....how do u disable it

Hi there,

As nanosani said, you go to Control Panel and click on Sounds and Audio Devices. There you go to the Sounds tab (2nd one on top) and look at the list labled Program Events then find & click on Exit Windows. Right below the "Program Events" list there's a drop-down list labled Sounds, open it and all the way up you'll see (None). Choose that and then Apply and you're done :)

BTW, cool tip nanosani .. this is usually an overlooked and simple method to increase preformance (even if slightly) :)


Ciao for now.

You can hibernate the PC. It's real fast

My PC takes an eternity to boot but not because of any sound.
It's the plethora of USB hardware I've installed, all of which needs to be powered up and initialised that causes the 5+ minute bootcycle...

five minutes !!!!

cripes ... I'd have thrown some of that stuff out long ago if mine took that long. Are you able to remove any from the start process? If I hit the 'restart' button, it takes 40 seconds before I'm back at a usable desktop.

A lot of 'tweak' sites advise that you can clear the page file at every reboot (or shutdown to be more specific), as a security measure in the registry. This setting for the ultra paranoid. What they don't mention is how much time it will add to the system shutting down

It's all hardware related (apart from my AV, firewall, mail- and webservers).

With 4 harddrives, a DVD burner, and a dozen USB devices, it just takes time for all that to power up and have their drivers loaded.
After that it's mainly the DSL which takes a while to come up, which delays the startup cycle of my mailserver and firewall.

Awesome guys thanks alot.

It's all hardware related (apart from my AV, firewall, mail- and webservers).

With 4 harddrives, a DVD burner, and a dozen USB devices, it just takes time for all that to power up and have their drivers loaded.
After that it's mainly the DSL which takes a while to come up, which delays the startup cycle of my mailserver and firewall.

With all this money you have invested in Paraphanalia, you don't have cable? How many webservers does a person need? A dozen USB devices? You work for the CIA or what? Guys at Circuit City must really smile when they see you coming.

I had an ide card hocked up on my machine to squeeze in a 3rd harddrive, and it botted in a fair 2 minutes. I also have a dozen usb devices but it never took more then 5 minuted to boot, look at mine now without the ide card ive timed some 13 sec. almost all the time.

There is much more you can do to improve Boot Times like using:

Autoruns to disable useless startup applications
Turning off unnecessary services
Making sure your system is Virus and Spyware free
Running PageDefrag
And of course using BootVis

All this is found here: Optimize XP - A Windows XP Optimization Guide

I had to reinstall windows xp and now when i start up it says windows is starting up and it takes about 2 min to get the logon screan. How can i get windows to start up faster?

I tried that but it still taking a long time for windows to start.

Begin here and get my Video on how to set and forget the # 1 Spy-ware

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Plus a Mini Course on How to Make Your Computer Faster .com !

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Enjoy :idea:

Hi mastercheif ! Can you please start a new thread in windows 2000, xp troubleshooting ... this way you'll get more help ...

I've noticed that when the exit windows and start windows sound is enabled ... the system takes a lot of time to boot or shutdown. You can disable these annoying sounds from your control panel -->Sounds and Audio Devices -> Sounds ... and make your system boot and shutdown faster.

Good thinking I would never have thought this would effect it.

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