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Thread: Upgrade or new PC?

  1. 10-08-2009, 04:25 PM #1
    _neuro
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    Upgrade or new PC?

    Hi,

    First of all I would like to say thanks and congratulate everyone on this forum as it has been an invaluable source of information for me during this project. I joined a long time ago but this is the first time i've felt the need to post.

    I currently have a boot time (crank to frontend) of around 1 minute 10 seconds. POST only takes around 5-7sec. The rest is too much and is annoying me. I would like to get under 30 seconds, 20 if possible as I have read others on this forum have managed to

    Here are my specs (i know its an old PC):

    XP-lite (ive tried to strip it down as much as possible)
    EMACHINES E3048
    Celeron D 3.33GHz
    Ram: 1.5Gb (512mb PC2-4200 Hynix + 1Gb Kingston PC2-4200)
    HDD: 60GB IDE ATA
    Mobo is ECS RC410-M

    I feel like ive exhausted all options of software/bios tweaking
    My question is whether or not it would be possible to upgrade hardware to get better boot times (its a long time since i've had to do that so my knowledge is quite outdated)

    for example with the current setup would a SATA hdd make much difference or is SSD even an option? im not sure if the mobo will take a dual core processor.

    I am a student and really have no option but to do it cheap on a tight budget

    Thanks
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  2. 10-09-2009, 06:25 AM #2
    DarquePervert
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    A SATA HDD could improve boot times.
    A SSD could lower them even more.

    Replacing mobo/CPU/RAM is going to have a bigger impact on overall speed & boot times, I think.

    My suggestion is try a new SATA HDD first and see if that improves your speed & boot times enough to be acceptable.
    If not, you have an upgrade path toward a whole new system.
    Have you looked in the FAQ yet?
    How about the Wiki?


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  3. 10-09-2009, 11:29 AM #3
    surfntomm
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    is there a good guide on lowering boot times.

    not to hijiack the thread but I DO have an SSD with a 7200 laptop HD for storage with 1 Gb of ram running XP SP2 on an atom 330.

    My crank to boot is roughly in the minute mark which includes the 5s delay to turn the pc on from the M2-atx. I have editted the startup config file via ms config and gone in the bios to make sure the drives were properly selected as master and slave or (drive 0 drive 1). Where can slow booters go to get better boot times I have spent hours searching the internet with little to no success. I keep seeing people boot in 20 seconds etc...

    It also seems that once i added my laptop 7200 rpm HD that my boot times lengthened by a decent amount.
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  4. 10-09-2009, 05:26 PM #4
    DarquePervert
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    Quote Originally Posted by surfntomm View Post
    is there a good guide on lowering boot times.

    not to hijiack the thread


    but I DO have an SSD with a 7200 laptop HD for storage with 1 Gb of ram running XP SP2 on an atom 330.


    My crank to boot is roughly in the minute mark which includes the 5s delay to turn the pc on from the M2-atx. I have editted the startup config file via ms config and gone in the bios to make sure the drives were properly selected as master and slave or (drive 0 drive 1). Where can slow booters go to get better boot times I have spent hours searching the internet with little to no success. I keep seeing people boot in 20 seconds etc...

    It also seems that once i added my laptop 7200 rpm HD that my boot times lengthened by a decent amount.
    You'll have to do some searching. There are a number of guides, and they all cover different areas. Some are better than others.
    You've done many of the things I do to streamline boot.

    Other things I do in the BIOS:
    - Make sure any unused ports or devices are disabled in the BIOS and removed in the BIOS. LPT port, COM port, Floppy drive, etc.
    - Make certain that the HDD is the first boot device listed.
    - Turn off USB boot all together to prevent it from seeking bootable USB devices.

    Also, are you doing a cold boot, or are you using hibernate or standby mode?
    Have you looked in the FAQ yet?
    How about the Wiki?


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  5. 10-09-2009, 06:00 PM #5
    Punky
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    if you decide to get a new pc then i'd suggest this one. very very cheap, and works amazing, i know because i'm using it.
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856119012
    A couple things to note about this system:
    - the motherboard is a mini itx but the case is a bit large for a mini itx, but still small.
    - i got hibernation to work at about 20s from ignition
    - boot time is roughly the same using windows 7 + windows startup programs
    - works really well in +35*C to -10*C

    I'm currently using it with s3 standby, so there's absolutely no boot time lag there, ignition and music is playing within 1 second. So if that's a possibilty for you then you should really consider it. Another thing, what psu are you using? i know the old opus and m2atx had a 5 seconds delay before boot, thats extremely annoying.
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