Survey: Startup times and methods

**CARLOS_CET** · 03-07-2006, 07:25 AM

Originally Posted by JasonWW

Carlos, why don't you breakdown your boot up time section by section and put the info in your earlier post.

What Nlite should do is speed up the HDD loading time from hibernate, I think, I've never used Nlite. Is the HDD load the longest part of your bootup?

I wonder if your times are similar to gnomad? He's using a simlar setup and is gettin 50 second boot times as well. You may have to live with the 12 sec BIOS delay, but I'm sure you can spped up the HDD load by switching to a faster unit. If you have an extra desktop HDD, preferably a 7200rpm, you can Ghost your laptops partition to the bigger HDD and see how the speed compares. I know this one guy using a Maxtor serial ATA drive with NCQ that XP and a few other programs running that can come out of hibernation and load from the HDD in about 2 seconds. This is the fastest I have ever heard of. I'm going to be getting a similar HDD later eventually myself.

It's pretty well known that the laptop drives are always going to be slower than a desktop drive. By how much is really the question.

I updated my info in the previous post. My BIOS boot time is pretty quick. It takes a while after the BIOS is done. I know my drive is a 4200 RPM drive. I have faster drives (3.5") that I can try but I want to keep the laptop drive because it fits in my ampie case. I'm going to create an image of my current drive and put the image on another similair laptop drive and see if the boot time is faster. When I get some time, I'm gonna do the nlite and hope the helps a lot. Thanks for the help.

One more question, is it better to hibernate or standby. Pros and cons?

**JasonWW** · 03-07-2006, 07:39 AM

Wow, your HDD load time is really up there. I was suggesting a 3.5 drive that you know is going to be faster to see how big a difference it is. You may not see much change from one laptop drive to another.

What you can do is go into Task Manager and click the Performance tab and then look at your Physical Memory. It should say 523???K. Now subract the number below it (Available) and that number should be how much of your phsical memory is being used. As an experiment, turn off as many programs as you can including Frodoplayer so that you only have the bare minimum. Now see how much RAM is being used. Hibernate and then measure how long it takes to load from that hibernation file.

You see, the more RAM being used means you will have a larger hibernation file to load from. If you reduce the amount of RAM being used it should make the hibernation file load faster. That's what NLite is basically going to do, reduce the amount of RAM being used.

**CARLOS_CET** · 03-08-2006, 09:12 AM

Originally Posted by JasonWW

Wow, your HDD load time is really up there. I was suggesting a 3.5 drive that you know is going to be faster to see how big a difference it is. You may not see much change from one laptop drive to another.

What you can do is go into Task Manager and click the Performance tab and then look at your Physical Memory. It should say 523???K. Now subract the number below it (Available) and that number should be how much of your phsical memory is being used. As an experiment, turn off as many programs as you can including Frodoplayer so that you only have the bare minimum. Now see how much RAM is being used. Hibernate and then measure how long it takes to load from that hibernation file.

You see, the more RAM being used means you will have a larger hibernation file to load from. If you reduce the amount of RAM being used it should make the hibernation file load faster. That's what NLite is basically going to do, reduce the amount of RAM being used.

Jason, I really appreciate all the advice. I'm going to try that out. I use minlogon and minlogon shutdown app to turn the system off. I have to set the shutdown method to standby. I can put it to hibernate but the minlogon shutdown app comes up full screen each time I boot-up because it's not set to standby. I did one registry edit where the system would boot off RAM?? I can look for the exact change if you would like. Also, I think I made another registry edit to pretty much kill all apps if they don't shut down fast enough. I wonder if this is keeping me from getting into standby or hibernate. These are some things I've had questions with but I haven't really found any answers by searching around. I really want my time for starting up to be at the most, 30 seconds. I wish I could get it to 10-20 seconds but I don't think that's possible for me. HELP!!!!!!!!!1

**JasonWW** · 03-08-2006, 10:03 AM

What is "minlogon" and why do you use it?

**CARLOS_CET** · 03-08-2006, 10:06 AM

It's a part of Windows embeded. It replaces winlogon and is suppose to make booting up faster... http://mason.gmu.edu/~sfiorito/eXPinstall.htm . I thought that you guys with the fast boot time used something like minlogon....

**JasonWW** · 03-08-2006, 10:13 AM

No, I'm running regular XP. I haven't turned off any services or anything. I did make sure uneccesary programs are not started at bootup. Stuff like virus programs, etc... I'm also not using any kind of logon as no security or passwords are used on the CarPC. I think I'm using around 150MB of my physical RAM.

I'm going to be installing a new mobo and CPU soon. A 3000+ AMD and I think that will speed up the load time, but I'm not sure. We'll see. A little later I'll be replacing my HDD for a newer, faster model, probably a SATA with NCQ. I'm hoping all that will allow a boot (hibernation boot) in under 15 seconds total. I'll just have to wait and see.

**CARLOS_CET** · 03-13-2006, 08:04 AM

Ok. So I re-did my OS install this weekend. I ended up using nlite (got my install down to 178MB.

1. Hardware Configuration
* PC config - Epia M1000, 512M, 12G laptop drive, 4200RPM
* startup controller - M1ATX, 5 sec startup delay
* tweaks/configs -
2. Software Configuration
* operating system - Windows XP Pro
* front end & component - Frodoplayer
* tweaks/configs - some services disabled,nlite and regedits tweaks
3. Startup Stratgey
* type of startup - hibernate
* no special startup tricks, ignition wired directly to M1ATX
4. Startup time, broken down by component of possible
* startup controller delay - ?
* BIOS delay - 5 secs
* HDD delay - 30 secs
* total time from startup initiation (ignition or remote entry) until music comes from speakers - about 35-40 secs
5. Subjective information
* On a scale of 1 (not important) to 10 (very important) how important is a quick startup time? - 10
* On a scale of 1 (not satisfied) to 10 (very satisfied) how do you feel about the startup time of your system? - 5
* On a scale of 1 (not important) to 10 (very important) rate how interested you are in improving your startup time. - 10
6. Any other configs, notes or comments that don't fall into any of the categories above.
** I think that making some more tweaks...I can get the pc to start-up faster. I'm going to compare the boot times between hibernate and standby. I couldn't get bootvis to work on this setup for some reason so I have to look into that. I want to see what is delaying my start time.

**JasonWW** · 03-14-2006, 01:57 AM

I've also been trying a few things with a new mobo. I noticed that the video BIOS screen took about 10 seconds before it got to the mobo BIOS screen. I'm using an old Vanta PCI video card, BTW, so I pulled the Matrox AGP card out of my main PC and then tested it and it's video BIOS screen only lasted 5 seconds. So I figure I can shave at least 5 seconds off my total boot time just by choosing a different video card.

I did have to make sure the monitor was turned on when I measured it otherwise I might not be able to see when it finished.

Maybe it would be a good idea if we included video card boot time as well. If any of you guys are using a seperate video card, can you measure just it from the time you hit the power button or from the time the PSU turns everything on?

I was thinking about getting a entry level Dual Head card with TV out. Anyone happen to use something like that?

Anyway, I just thought I'd bring this to everyones attention.

**pshadwick** · 03-16-2006, 12:45 PM

Using an old Dell Laptop Latitude CPi A 366Mhz Pentium II 256Mb Ram 40Gb hard drive.

The Battery is old and weak and will only keep the Laptop running about 6-7 minutes (when fully charged).

I've currently got it set to hibenate after 10 minutes and shut of the hard drive after 3.

Power from the truck is shut off when the ign is shut off.

At startup I restart the truck then press the power button on the laptop.

I have music in 4.5 sec.

It takes quite a bit longer to reload the screen (RoadRunner) and eevn longer, perhaps 60-70seconds to reload GPS (Delorme Street Atlas).

From a cold start it takes forever, perhaps 2-3 minutes to start everything).

Only problem is I get the battery low message every time I restart (although I believe I can eliminate that easily).

...Paul

**JasonWW** · 03-21-2006, 09:18 PM

Paul, sounds like your using one of the standby states. There's no other way you can get music in 4 1/2 seconds. Or did you mean 45 seconds?

Thread: Survey: Startup times and methods

LinkBack

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Display

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions