/pcq/media/agency_attachments/L8pkS8gpnodJThOdAfv1.jpg)
Follow UsDo you often leave your desk after turning on your PC because it takes ages to load Windows? If yes, read on and we will tell you how to zip through to your desktop as fast as your hardware permits! The Windows startup time depends on different versions of Windows as well as how they are configured. So for some of you, these steps would really make a big difference, while for others, it may not be that zippy.
Quite a lot of boot up time is used up even before you get to Windows. First, set your boot sequence to start with the hard disk and not the floppy drive.
|
Hibernate your Windows |
| Another thing to do is not to completely shut down your OS every time you want to shut down your system. In Windows 9x you can opt to go on stand by while with Windows 2000 and XP, you can put the OS to hibernation instead. This works on notebooks as well as on PCs. You can activate hibernation from Control panel/Power options. Click on the hibernate tab and enable hibernation support. Now when you click on Start/Shutdown, one of the options available is hibernate. You can choose to hibernate with applications open, and they will be saved. After the OS goes into hibernation, you can power down the machine. When you restart the machine, you will be prompted for your password if you are on PC (and not on a notebook), and you will be restored speedily to where you left off. |
A major cause of long booting times is applications that automatically load during startup. Many applications, when installed, add themselves to the startup group. Usually an application will ask you whether you want it to load during startup during the installation. Therefore, keep a close lookout for this question when installing any application. Don’t let it load during startup unless it’s critical like anti-virus software or a personal firewall. For instance, MS-Office and Real Audio do it by default. A quick way to see which applications load during startup is by having a look at the Start Menu>Startup folder. However, this displays only a partial list.
For viewing the complete list, go to Start>Run and type ‘msconfig’. From the window that pops up, go to the ‘Startup’ tab, and you’ll see a list of all programs that load during startup. Uncheck all programs you don’t want to run on startup. The ‘msconfig’ utility is only available in Windows 95/98/Me and XP, the exception being Windows 2000 which unfortunately does not have an equivalent for the same command. Upon adding six commonly-used applications namely Real Player, Winzip, Microsoft Office, DAP, Yahoo Messenger and Winamp, to the startup, we observed that Windows 98 took 10 seconds more in starting up.
Another cause for slower Windows boot-up is having a desktop theme or heavy wallpaper installed. To find out if this is the cause, turn them off and switch to the Windows default ones. Windows 98 SE checks whether any floppy drives are connected to the system at every boot. This takes up some booting time, so you can turn this off from Control Panel>System>Performance. Click on the ‘File system’ button and go to the ‘Floppy Disk’ tab. Disable this feature from here.
|
Antivirus at bootup |
| Some antiviruses run a complete system scan at every boot up, and this can take quite some time given today’s large hard disks. While we are not advising against this, if you regularly update your antivirus data files and scan your files, then there may not be a pressing need for this scan at every bootup. |
For Windows NT/2000/XP users, the default timeout for displaying the list of OSs at boot up is 30 seconds. This can be reduced to any time either by editing the ‘boot.ini’ file or by going to Control Panel>System>Advanced tab, and click the Startup and Recovery’ button. You can change the time from here. If you have only one OS installed, you can even change it to zero so that it will straightaway load the OS without prompting you.
Besides these, regular maintenance of file system like disk scanning, and defragmenting your hard disks also helps in speeding up Windows bootup.