Windows Vista Faster Startup and Shutdown

Does anyone know of tips to make Vista boot up faster and shutdown faster as well? There are registry tweks which can do this, but I don't wanna use/install tweak progs. I have a Toshiba Sattelite A200 Centrino Duo, and I think XP would do it faster! Thanx.

 

Delete anything in the Start/All Programs/Startup folder you don't need at startup. (usually everything). Use the defragmenter on a regular basis. Although I don't like the one in Vista as it has no options and no graphical display. Not even an estimate of the remaining time to completion.
I use PerfectDisk 8.0.64. Diskeeper is also excellent. Both are not freeware unfortunately.
Run a registry cleaner (EasyCleaner, RegSeeker) and then a registry defragmenter afterwards. (linked in my signature)

Black Viper http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm
Has some services tweaks (turn them off). Use at your own risk, but that site has been around for several years. I leave my services as standard, but many swear by the speed increase tweaking these services causes.

It's always a good idea to keep the system clean such as periodically deleting all that is allowed in your C:\Users\ "your username "\AppData\Local\Temp folder, and running the disk cleanup utility available by right clicking your system drive in My Computer and selecting properties.

 

Thanx Paul. Will have a look at BV and return with the considerations.
I already use PerfectDisk, but haven't noticed much improvement. The problem of Vista in relation to XP is that it seems the CPU and HDD are ALWAYS in constant activity, and then little resources are left behind fo the system to "breathe "! XP stays there, quiet and ready for action, and it makes a difference. All we know Vista will have to go through an SP soon enough. The way things are is very boring. I also use CCleaner - http://www.ccleaner.com/download/ which is freeware and does some of the job. Didn't like Diskeeper much. Have it here in a corner. Vista makes me spend a lot of money trying for solutions!

 

Suggestion, get a memory stick, maybe 1Gb (I found a cheap stick of 512Mb) and set it up as "Readyboost" (you may need to check if it is compatible for Readyboost). I'm not sure it is increasing my startup or shutdown times, but they are quite quick, at least on my system. I have a very "lean" system though.

Check in Control Panel -> Performance Information and Tools. Look through the Tasks list on the left-hand side. There you can set it as "good looking" or "fast ".

Look in Task Scheduler. Actually I don't mind things running when I am not trying to get things done so I don't adjust them very much. I would rather they happen in the background and not, say, trying to run at startup.

Turn Indexing off if you don't need your file system "ordered" all the time.

Matt

 

Thanx Matt. I have an SD Kingston 2GB, but the bloody system says it's not readyboost compatible. What is, then? Any tips or tested findings? I don't want to spend all the money in tests, you know what I mean.

 

On a quick test, I could not say there was any real difference in startup/shutdown with or without Readyboost. My system was 15-19.5 seconds shutdown. 46-48 seconds startup (press button...quick login ...wait till timer stops).

The Readyboost shadows the pagefile system from what I understand. The information still gets written to disk, so it may not be very much help at startup/shutdown.

Best compatibility chart seems to be:
http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/misc/readyboost/
They should now say "Readyboost compatible" on the label (or in the specifications if you want to look them up).

Maybe don't get the memory stick now if you think you have spent enough at the moment. Watch the prices though. For $5, my stick can sit there pretending to make things faster all it likes

Matt

 

Thanx a million Matt. Mine is like just the same shutdown (19 sec.), and around 1.40 min. startup, all stop-watched, and startup until Sidebar sits there comfortably. i think this is the average. Nice compatibility chart. Checking out.