Help write an FAQ on Nlite and XP system builder

antimatter · 08-18-2005, 03:25 AM

Hey guys,

We need a good Howto/faq to get your XP installation down very small for fast boot times.

This is not really a discussion thread, please post what you know. We will be compiling it at the end if we get a good enough response.

Please help

Viscouse · 08-18-2005, 03:35 PM

Is this just for nlite or fast boot times or small footprint.
Or a combo of the above?

antimatter · 08-18-2005, 05:54 PM

Small foot prints is basically what nlite and others do, wich lead to fast boot times. What i am after is step by step type article to help a n00b get a nice small footprint and fast boot up times. Any help from anyone is greatly appriciated

matt11601 · 08-19-2005, 08:33 PM

Here's a quick tutorial on making Windows boot faster:

Note: Tutorial done on Windows XP Pro SP2 machine. Should work exactly the same for Windows XP Home version too.

Note: This tutorial has big pictures. They're big so that no one has trouble following this (hopefully).

Step 1
-Click the Start button, type in "msconfig.exe" without quotes and hit Enter.
-See the 2 pictures below for instructions...

* /NOGUIBOOT means all pictures during the boot up process are not loaded. What does that mean? You know when you start Windows XP you see the WinXP logo and the progress loading bar? Well that will no longer be shown which cuts boot time.

Step 2
-Click the Start button, type in "services.msc" without quotes and hit Enter.
-See the huge picture for instructions...

Step 3
-Go to http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/autoruns.html and download a programs called AutoRuns.
-So what does this program do? Well, it will scan the Windows Registry for EVERYTHING that is started during Windows. Msconfig and Services is a good start, but AutoRuns will list even more things that are started up and believe me, the list is a lot bigger. This tool is great and it's free.

Well that's it, this tutorial is not complete at all and I'll probably add/delete stuff based on everyone's response. Remember, there are also BIOS tweaks you can do to get a faster boot time.

I'll subscribe to this thread to answer any questions that may come up. If I don't respond for some reason, email me at matt11601@hotmail.com

antimatter · 08-22-2005, 04:18 PM

how much speed gains have you seen from this? i am looking for a tutorial with the most bang for your buck. I know there are hundreds of tiny tweaks for xp but they never seem to do much good.

Still hoping for someone to write a tutorial on nlite and xp sysbuilder

fonseca · 08-22-2005, 07:00 PM

Nlite now lets you do many of the tweaks pre-install that you used to have to do manually after installing Windows. I'll update this post with my usual Nlite, XPSB and post-install routine shortly.

matt11601 · 08-23-2005, 11:27 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by antimatter

how much speed gains have you seen from this? i am looking for a tutorial with the most bang for your buck. I know there are hundreds of tiny tweaks for xp but they never seem to do much good.

Still hoping for someone to write a tutorial on nlite and xp sysbuilder

I think that will depend on the system you have. I recommend trying it and seeing if you notice a difference. Doing one little tweak won't shave off a lot of time. But many tweaks should, especially tweaks in the BIOS.

I guess if software tweaks isn't fast enough for you, you can upgrade to a faster HD. But that seems like a last ditch effort.

antimatter · 08-24-2005, 07:29 PM

@fonseca
Look foward to anything you have to add

@matt11601
All though i appreciate you effort it seems to fall out of the scope of the intended article. I know a lot about the different tweaks and have tried alot of them. as you say the bios tweaks speed things up alot but what we are trying to get at here is not a overall optimizing xp because there is a forum for that. We are specifically talking about things we can do to get our winxp installs down. Small footprints are faster to load.

Also why would post a tweak if you hadent tested it yourself and furthermore if you tested it yourself you should know what kind of speed increase is seen based on your hardware. Thats what i was asking.

Cheers

matt11601 · 08-24-2005, 08:01 PM

Here's the machine specs I've done this on:

2x AMD Athlon MP running at 1.2 GHZ
1GB RAM
ATI AIW 7500 & Matrox Millenium II
450W PS

Those aren't your typical carputer specs which I why I can't really say how much of an increase it will give a carputer. But for my machine, it sped things up quite a bit. I'd have to say ~10 seconds is now gone from boot.

But I see what you're saying about the purpose of this thread. This is out of the scope, but have you seen this article:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology...tml?tw=rss.TOP

replicant · 11-07-2005, 11:22 AM

Sorry to not offer anything constructive, other than to try and get this thread going again. I am wanting to nLite or at the very least apply the "best bang for your buck" tweaks as Antimatter mentioned. I will definitely attempt the ones matt11601 offered, but would like to take it that one step further to nLite the machine. I'd like to not have to hibernate the box at all and do a straight up boot from complete off.

Delete my post if necessary since it is nothing of value to others, I'm just trying to get the thread resurrected.

Thanks.

piabu · 11-30-2005, 07:47 AM

I thought reducing the footprint of the install had minimal effect on boot times? Why not just concentrate on getting S1 / S3 modes to work - that should give better returns than mucking with a cold boot. Unless you are planning to boot of solid-state storage media (e.g. CF) where storage space is at a premium.

[ This is actually a test post. Might as well post something a bit more useful than "testing123". ]

WhoIsThisGuy? · 11-30-2005, 01:06 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by piabu

I thought reducing the footprint of the install had minimal effect on boot times? Why not just concentrate on getting S1 / S3 modes to work - that should give better returns than mucking with a cold boot. Unless you are planning to boot of solid-state storage media (e.g. CF) where storage space is at a premium.

[ This is actually a test post. Might as well post something a bit more useful than "testing123". ]

Reducing the footprint can have a MASSIVE effect IF ur removing the right things. Less services/process/blah blah blah for Win to load on a cold boot. I always cold boot to save battery. But I haven't even finished reducing yet.

Works for me.

If I get a chance (bit busy with work atm) I'll type up what i've got/done atm and what comparisons I can. at least thats what the OP was asking for and not this discussion

antimatter · 11-30-2005, 01:12 PM

Hibernation takes almost as long as a cold boot becasue of all the USB devices i have.

Suspend to ram is not an option for me because of the motherboard i use

jerico2day · 11-30-2005, 04:59 PM

Note that when disabling services, other services may wait until they timeout, increasing the length of bootup time. So you may want some services, though not required and taking up system resources, on to keep from having a 30 second bootup.

I believe you can see what's holding up boot time with a nice utility called bootvis.

WhoIsThisGuy? · 11-30-2005, 05:51 PM

Ur not wrong. As long as u can track through the dependencies tho its usually not to hard to spot bottlenecks like this and stop them from occuring. BootVis is a great utility for finetuning. Also there are many lists of startup processes and their dependencies out there -

- and when removing any components, its always worth checking a decent list for any potential snags.

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