what is the safest way to speed up the boot time on a PC?

Question

OVer the past 3 years, my boot time has slowed considerably. I have not installed much additional software. How can I safely remove things for thew boot process?

Good reponses but I am not comfortable as to specifically what I should and more importantly should not eliminate form start-up. Some things are obvious. Most are not.

Answer 1

You need to say what operating system you are using, but if Windows XP- go to Start-run, type in MSCONFIG, click 'ok'. A box will open, click the startup tab. View everything that is checked. These are the things that start up when the computer does. Leave KBD and RECGUARD checked. Also your anti-virus which is probably called ccapp. Click 'ok' to restart. When you do a box will show saying 'you have used windows startup configuration tool,etc'. Check the box that says 'Do not show this message' and 'ok'.

Answer 2

It depends on what you mean by boot process. If you are talking about a cold boot which is to turn the system completely off then hit the power button. You might see if there is a way to skip the memory check on your system thru bios. If your talking about when your operating system loads such as Windows then look at your startup programs and also see what is loading in the bottom right hand side of the screen (system tray) too many start up programs can slow the system down also if your pc is using up all the physical memory it will slow to a halt.

Answer 3

all the unneccessary stuff would be in ur pc. u didnt mentioned ur PC configuaration and the OS ur using. I think that it would be WinXp.
1) goto run
2) type msconfig
3) a window will appear with some tabs
4) goto to the startup tab
5) remove all the unneccessary programs and processes known to u
6) click on OK
7) now restart ur computer

this would help u a little get ur RAM upgraded to 512MB ram

now read carefully a little bit hard to understand. if u get ur RAM upgraded u can pin the kernel in the RAM itself which speeds up ur system

1) goto run
2) type regedit
3) a window will appear with a hierarchial tree
4) navigate through the tree to the follwing subkey
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\
SYSTEM\
CurrentControlSet\
Control\
Session Manager\
Memory Management
5) here there will be some set of keys on the right side of the window
6) now find the "DisablePagingExecutive" key
7) right click on it select modify and change the data value to "1"(one)
8) click on OK
9) close regedit and reboot

this will increase ur systems performance to the higher level but be carefull do the second process only if ur RAM is 512MB or more

Thank you
Enigma

Answer 4

excellent job anwering your own question -- here's what else you can do -- obviously you know that IE (or Netscape Navigator or Firefox//whatever your preference is) is running if you are online. What you probably don't know are all the things your computer is loading at start-up.

1) press control-alt-delete at the same time -- this pulls up Windows Task Manager --if you see anything you didn't open, write it down.

2) while there -- go to processes -- if you see anything unfamiiliar under your user name (DO NOT WORRY about system items), write them down

3) go to the Start Icon, Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs and get rid of what you wrote down.

4) back to the Start Icon -- click on run. now type "msconfig" (no "") -- this will open your System Configuration Utiltiy. Now go to Startup -- this shows what is loaded at startup. Close what you don't want to load.

5) reboot at warp speed, scotty

Answer 5

the msconfig tip is good.
You can also not boot. just let the computer go to sleep or hibernation when you are not using it.
Sleep means only keep the minimum running, like refresh the memory. my laptop can stay on sleep for a few days on the battery.
Hibernation means save the state of the register and memory to the hard drive and power down. When powering up, it will just restore the memory and register to what they where before going on hibernation. it will take more or less time depending on how much memory you have. with 2GB of ram it takes 10 to 20 seconds i would say.

Answer 6

Click start then Run, then type msconfig press enter. Click the startup tab on the far right, uncheck the programs that you do not use. (think of it as a preload, to make them load faster when you want to use them).. But all the programs in that list load when you boot your PC.

Answer 7

It is typically normal for that to happen. It's just writing to the disk. But you can make it slightly better by, lessoning the startup programs from running in the background. Click start, run, type, msconfig, startup tab, search for the startup item names, Certain ones should remained checked.

Answer 8

i take advantage of startup mechanic and locate it elementary to apply and mostly does as I anticipate. I also use Window washer to delete the archives I dont want when I close down the workstation and erase information superhighway searches which also hurries up the workstation.

Answer 9

wow, i just checked this out to give some advice but there's a ton of great answers above me.

Also, windows creates a lot of temporary files. You can open My Computer, right-click on your hard drive and on the General Tab, click on Disk Cleanup to rid your drive of temporary crap.

Answer 10

You may have spyware and adware so find a program in any way you find suitable to remove that. It will speed things up considerably