XP boot-up time??

  • Thread starter Thread starter bew
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B

bew

Can someone please direct me to a site or group to find information
about how adding memory to XP changes boot-up time?
TIA
 
Minimum Recommended Ram 256, optimum level 1 gig.

Boot up time is most effected by applications the run at startup, adware, &
maleware.
At run prompt type msconfig > click startup tab
You will be shocked at how many applications think that they need to be
running in the background. Most of these apps can be disabled. Do you need
windows office always running in the background, quicktime, or Adobe reader.
The answer is absolutely not.You will not see any change in the performance
of installed apps. that are disabled in startup. Individually they might
start slightly slower when you do decide to use them, but they will run as
they always did.

Also run spyware detection program to check for these obnoxious programs.


Good luck

Jeff
 
Windows XP Performance
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/evaluate/xpperf.mspx

Computer RAM: A Crucial Component
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/expert/dunn_03august11_ram.mspx

4 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer's Performance
http://www.microsoft.com/AtWork/getstarted/speed.mspx

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxp/choose.mspx

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| Can someone please direct me to a site or group to find information
| about how adding memory to XP changes boot-up time?
| TIA
 
In
bew said:
Can someone please direct me to a site or group to find
information
about how adding memory to XP changes boot-up time?
Click to expand...


If a computer running Windows XP doesn't have enough RAM, it will
do more paging, and paging (disk I/O) is mechanical and much
slower than electronic access to RAM. So if you don't have enough
RAM for the applications you run, adding memory will improve
performance. If you do have enough RAM to not page at all, or
very little, adding more RAM will do almost nothing for you.

But the paragraph above is about performance in general, for a
running computer. With respect to decreasing boot-up time, adding
RAM is likely to make a much smaller difference if any.

Besides, my personal view is that the attention many people pay
to how long it takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the
computer's speed is otherwise satisfactory, it may not be worth
worrying about. Most people start their computers once a day or
even less frequently. In the overall scheme of things, even a few
minutes to start up isn't very important. Personally I power on
my computer when I get up in the morning, then go get my coffee.
When I come back, it's done booting. I don't know how long it
took to boot and I don't care.
 
I agree, Ken. The startup folder is liklier to affect startup time than any
ram over 256MB.
 
bew said:
Can someone please direct me to a site or group to find information
about how adding memory to XP changes boot-up time?
TIA
Click to expand...

Download the page file usage monitor from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/ and run it immediately
after the computer has booted up.

That will show you how much active memory content has been moved from
RAM to the page file so as to allow that RAM to be used for other,
currently more important purposes.

More RAM would reduce or even eliminate this paging, thereby speeding
up the startup process by whatever amount of time it took to actually
write out those pages from RAM to the page file on the hard drive.

Unless there is a very substantial amount of actual page file usage
(e.g. more than 40 or 50 mb) it is unlikely that the time saving at
startup is going to be noticeable.

Good luck



Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm
 
Agreed!

If you have sufficient RAM to begin with, adding more will not affect the
boot time appreciably.

Now, if you only have 128 meg, going to 256 meg will make a big difference.
Going from there to 512 meg may make no difference at all.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from: George Ankner
"If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!"
 
Colin Barnhorst said:
What makes you think that it does?
Click to expand...
First, thanks to all who replied.

My son recently added a 1 gig memory chip to existing 512 meg. He says
that with the edition his boot-up time changes from 30 sec. to 1 min. 30
sec, but with either memory chip alone the boot-up time is 3O sec. The
program load time after boot is much improved with all memory.
If any more info is required, I'll contact him and relay to this group. He
is travelling most of the time and asked me to solicit help.
 
bew said:
First, thanks to all who replied.

My son recently added a 1 gig memory chip to existing 512 meg. He says
that with the (edition) addition his boot-up time changes from 30 sec. to 1 min. 30
sec, but with either memory chip alone the boot-up time is 3O sec. The
program load time after boot is much improved with all memory.
If any more info is required, I'll contact him and relay to this group. He
is travelling most of the time and asked me to solicit help.
Click to expand...
 
I currently have two PC's that I use every day.
1) P4 3.0, Asus P5GD2 MB, 1 gig DDR2 RAM,. ABIT ATI 700X PCI express Video
card, 160GB WD HD
2) AMD64 4000+, Abit AV8 MB, 1 gig DDR Ram, Radeon 8500 Video Card, 2-160GB
WD HD's

PC 2 boots in half the time it take PC 1 to boot. It also blows PC 1 out of
the water in photoShop and Premiere.

What conclusion can be drawn here? Hardware makes a lot of difference.

Jeff
 
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