Slow Vista Boot Up.

[forumdude123]

Okay, after booting up my vista based notebook, it runs like an angel. Only problem, it takes 65 seconds to boot up, from the older 45 seconds. I performed every single tweak i could get my hands on. about 55 to 60 of those seconds are spent on the vista screen with the green bar, which goes around 20 times before leaving (used to be 8-9). Any suggestions, other than system recovery, restore, or vista re installs would be greatly appreciated, and if helpful, added to you reputation. Thank you.

P.S. does anyone know what is going on when the green bar is going across the screen.

[scru]

Have you tried defragmenting? I read somewhere that vista's defragmentation engine arranges the files on the physical disk in a way that makes loading quicker (since the files it needs are placed each one after the next, so seeking is minimized).

I'm not sure exactly what parts of the loading process are completed during the march-of-the-green-bar, but I suspect it might be something hard disk intensive (this is why I suggested defragmenting) since you might notice (on average) the more files on your hard disk is, the longer it takes.

[forumdude123]

i've tried that, but it didn't work. is there anything else that may work.

[jbennet]

having a: many network interfaces and protocols , b: many hotfixes c: many drivers

increases vistas bootup time as they all need to be loaded.

e.g clean install vusta system may take say, 30 seconds
system with all the drivers may take say, 60 seconds

same for xp

[forumdude123]

i've done a, b, c, and did a clean install two weeks ago!!!

[jbennet]

windows oses just slow down as they get older. its the way it is

[dandare]

Okay, after booting up my vista based notebook, it runs like an angel. Only problem, it takes 65 seconds to boot up, from the older 45 seconds. I performed every single tweak i could get my hands on. about 55 to 60 of those seconds are spent on the vista screen with the green bar, which goes around 20 times before leaving (used to be 8-9). Any suggestions, other than system recovery, restore, or vista re installs would be greatly appreciated, and if helpful, added to you reputation. Thank you.

P.S. does anyone know what is going on when the green bar is going across the screen.

It could be startup programs set to run at system boot.

Try following the steps here: http://www.thehappypc.co.uk/2008/05/manage-your-start-up-programs-for-free.html

[forumdude123]

I've done that a long time ago. i ve reinstalled windows, and am planing on buying a 7200rpm hard drive to fix the problem. the bar goes around 8-9 times due to the install. thanks to those who offered help, and please continue to post help since many people come to look at this forum.

[Smalls]

By default, both Windows Vista and XP wait 30 seconds during the startup process before loading the operating system. You can safely decrease that time and speed up vista.
As for all other Windows I don't know
But, its probably the same

There are 2 ways to do this,

Option 1
Hold the keys that has the windows symbol on it and press R
Type in "msconfig" and hit OK
UAC "User Account Control" will pop-up (If you have it turned on)
Click continue
Go to the boot tab
Change the value in the "timeout" box from 30 to 5 seconds
And to see what happens behind the green bar at startup
put a check in the box next to "OS boot information"
The other tabs select what services and programs to start
Click apply and your done

Or,
Option 2
Go to the start menu
Right-click on computer
Click on properties
You then need to click on advanced system settings
UAC will open click continue
Go down to startup and recovery and click settings
Change the value from 30 to 5 and click OK

For XP,
Just go to the advanced tab in properties of My Computer

Now, Reboot your PC. You’ll notice a boost in the performance of the startup process.

The green bar at startup is when all the drivers are loaded
after the drivers are loaded windows then does some kind of check on the hard-drive(s)

This is how you can speed it up
and this is what happens at the green bar

[forumdude123]

been there, done that

[iftitaj]

By default, both Windows Vista and XP wait 30 seconds during the startup process before loading the operating system. You can safely decrease that time and speed up vista. As for all other Windows I don't know But, its probably the same

There are 2 ways to do this,

Option 1

• Hold the keys that has the windows symbol on it and press R
• Type in "msconfig" and hit OK
• UAC "User Account Control" will pop-up (If you have it turned on)
• Click continue
• Go to the boot tab
• Change the value in the "timeout" box from 30 to 5 seconds
• And to see what happens behind the green bar at startup put a check in the box next to "OS boot information"
• The other tabs select what services and programs to start
• Click apply and your done

Or, Option 2 .........................

this is not what he was asking for .... you are giving instructions which is only relevant if the user has multiple OSes .... anyone can press enter quickly either.
what he was asking is that the vista itself takes longer to load - the process which starts after selection of vista entry in that boot menu (if multiple OSes installed).

the best step in increasing specially boot time & shutdown time is to optimize your registry that is defragment your registry. for win xp there are many such softwares available but i don't know anyone for vista .... if you have never done this then you may most probably see a dramatic improvement specially if you install/uninstall a lot of programs. i'll post here if i find any such registry defragmenting tool for vista.

[iftitaj]

ok i found one .... Auslogics Registry Defrag .... i use it regularly on my winxp sp2 & is very satisfied with it but haven't tried it on my vista x64 ..... will post how good it is for vista but its excellent for winXP. so you can try it. its free.

if you like my solution, plz add reputation to my post. :)

[iftitaj]

ok i tested it on vista x64.

here is my result:

registry was reduced by 15608 KB (13%)
speed of registry improved by 17%
registry size after optimization: 105,224 KB (87%)

one thing to tell you all is that registry will remain in memory at all time .... so the less size it is the better.
one more thing, registry unlike harddisk, won't fill those gaps in it with new data .... it always put new data at end .... resulting in increased registry size .... so regular defragmentation of it will boost performance more than defragmenting harddisk.

i hope you like my solution & it boost your system performance .... if so plz add reputation to my posts. :)

[RedDevil99]

Check what services are set to run at startup. You will find there are a few you can set to manual as you will not need them.
Make a note of any you change incase you have problems later. you can then change them back to automatic start.

[Smalls]

RegCure has done wonders on my pc's

The first time I ran it on my XP, it got rid of some 3000+ errors in the registry
I've had it for about 6 years
and on my Vista, it got rid of about 250 errors
I've had it since X-mas '07

And,

Also Speedy Vista has a lot of useful tip and hints

This site has all kinds of tips on vista
from hardware tips to vista services
the services are explained in detail w/ suggestions on which ones you don't need
You can also download .reg or .bat files to change various services and settings
depending on which one you get
but, use the .reg and .bat files at your own risk

Auslogics is a really good program for boosting sys performance
System Mechanic is $h!t, it has the potential to absolutely destroy windows
One wrong click and your boned

and one way to make windows shutdown faster is to edit the registry
Don't do this unless you sure you know what your doing
to open the registry press Win+R and type regedit
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
WaitToKillServiceTimeout=20000
change to 10 thousand 10000
this is some whacked out way of seconds

[forumdude123]

thanks, it works great, i now use aus logics reg. defrag

[iftitaj]

@Smalls: If you use those registry cleaners then keep two things in mind:

1) Never ever use it with multiple OSes unless you are an advanced user.

2) Never use their auto-cleaner or auto-fix thing .... that will show 1000s of things solved but that will create problems within Windows. See any techie site or articles, they all prohibit it.

So the best practice is that run those registry cleaners to only scan for errors .... but then see individual errors in detail by yourself to find out how much actually they are errors. Don't blindly let your reg cleaners to clean your registry.

just my 2 cents :)

[Smalls]

I don't know
they seem to work just fine on both
it hasn't actually messed anything up
i could really tell a difference in the speed on the XP
and i always make a backup before i use it
so i've always got at least 1
and regcure is supposed to work on both
like i've said i've always got at least one registry backup
and make one before i use it

[iftitaj]

One more small tip for boosting slight performance is to clear your Prefetch. Go to Windows\Prefetch & delete all files except ReadyBoost folder (I don't know how important that folder is for windows). That will hopefully improve some performance of your Vista.

P.S. Regularly clean your prefetch.

[forumdude123]

From what i heard, it is better to leave prefetch and super fetch alone, as they have their benefits. Now, to help me with this issue, i put my pc in sleep mode, and restart it once or twice a week, and only shut it down and unplug it during severe weather.