Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Speed bootup in Windows7

Windows 7 is faster overall than Vista. But startup and shutdown times can still be frustrating. If you shut down your computer once a day -or more -those minutes waiting for a usable Windows 7 desktop can seem to drag on forever.

The same can go for shutting down. The good news: There are steps you can take to shave seconds, even minutes, off of both processes.

Use your cores
Windows 7 is the first version of the operating system that can use all processor cores to speed bootup. There's just one problem: the feature is not active by default.
You can change that, though. Open Windows 7's Start menu, type "msconfig;' and click the msconfig.exe entry that appears.
The System Configuration dialog box opens. From there, click the Boot tab, and then click the Advanced Options button. From the resulting BOOT Advanced Options dialog box, select the checkbox labeled "Number of processors;' and then from the drop-down list box underneath, select the number of "cores" that your computer has.
Typically, just select the highest number offered in the drop-down box, Click OK, and you're done.

Remove fonts
Fonts in Windows 7 -and all previous versions of Windows -load at startup. So to cut down on startup time, pare your font collection to only those typefaces that you need and use.
Visit the Fonts dialog box by opening the Start menu and typing Fonts. Select the Fonts entry that appears and, from the resulting dialog box, delete any fonts you don't use.
To save those fonts for later use, try a font management program, such as Font Frenzy or Suitcase, which makes it easy to uninstall fonts without removing the underlying files.
Supercharge shutdown
Often what holds up the Windows shutdown routine is the operating system waiting for background and foreground processes to close. Microsoft has tried to alleviate the problem by introducing a Force Shutdown command in Windows 7.
This kicks in after 12 seconds by default. You can speed that up, however, by changing a registry setting. Open the Start menu, type "regedit:' and then click the regedit.exe entry that appears. The Windows Registry Editor opens.
In the left-hand pane of the Registry Editor, expands the HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE tree, and then expand System,
Current ControlSet, and Control. With the Control branch highlighted, look for the entry Wait ToKillService in the right-hand pane of the Registry Editor. Right-click it, select Modify from the pop-up menu, and from the resulting dialog box, change the value 12000 (for 12 seconds) to something lower.
Try 6000 for a start. Once you click OK, the setting will stick, and shutdown will proceed more quickly.
Buy an SSD
Software tweaks are useful, but they'll only speed startup and shutdown so far. But tweak the hard drive -and you might get the fastest performance possible. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are considerably faster than traditional magnetic platter hard drives. They're so much faster, in fact, that many people report a halving of their startup and shutdown times after upgrading.
Essentially, SSDs are a combination of nonvolatile flash memory and advanced controller chips that can retrieve and write data several times faster than the typical hard drive. Since bootup and shutdown can both be intensive data reading and writing processes, the fastest hard drive helps a lot.
The downside? SSDs are more expensive than conventional hard drives, and their capacities aren't as great. Atypical 80GB SSD, for instance, costs about $200. That same $200 can buy almost two ITB traditional hard drives.

Still, the combination of an SSD as a boot and application drive and a much larger conventional hard drive in the same system can provide the best of both worlds -and get your the startup and shutdown speeds you crave.
Adjust your BIOS
No matter how fast your hard drive or how much you optimize Windows 7 to improve bootup and shutdown times, your computer's BIOS can make you wait.
The BIOS -or Basic Input Output System –is the character-based screen that most computer users see as soon as they turn on their machines. It's the interface between the hardware installed in your computer and the operating system on your hard drive.
Often the BIOS contains settings that add unnecessarily to your bootup time. Enter the BIOS by pressing F2 or Fl0 upon starting up your computer. Once in the BIOS, look at all of the screen, and turn off any services or functions that you don't use.
For instance, if there's a Boot menu in the BIOS, make sure that the QuickBoot option is selected. Also, find the option for "boot device priority;' and make sure that your hard drive is selected as the first bootable drive, as opposed to your CD or DVD.

Also, turn off any bootup options -such as booting from a network or USB drive -if you don't use them. Finally, save your BIOS changes, and reboot. 

No comments:

Post a Comment