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Why Do Computers Take So Long to Boot Up?
An anonymous reader writes "Computers take too long to boot up, and it doesn't make sense to me. Mine takes around 30 seconds; it is double or triple that for some of my friends' computers that I have used. Why can't a computer turn on and off in an instant just like a TV? 99% of boots, my computer is doing the exact same thing. Then I get to Windows XP with maybe 50 to 75 megs of stuff in memory. My computer should be smart enough to just load that junk into memory and go with it. You could put this data right at the very start of the hard drive. Whenever you do something with the computer that actually changes what happens during boot, it could go through the real booting process and save the results. Doing this would also give you instant restarts. You just hit your restart button, the computer reloads the memory image, and you can be working again. Or am I wrong? Why haven't companies made it a priority to have 'instant on' desktops and laptops?"
Are you saying I'm special?
You're whining about 30 seconds? My god, get a life.
When I get up in the morning I go into my office and power up everything then hit the bathroom, start the coffee, walk the dogs then back in to grab a cup of now brewed coffee on my way to my desk.
By then everything is not only booted up but it's warmed up and happy.
You Generation M (microwave oven) kids need to quit demanding everything on demand.
"I want it and I want it NOW!"
SSe... The number survive at all so on, FreeBSD went rotting corpse 8easons why anyone
This is a question based on lack of research. There are many things you can do.
1. Dump c:\windows\prefetch, and lock it where it can't read/write.
2. Use winlite to strip out crap like WMP, IE, ActiveX, and everything else you don't use, NO OS shouldn't require these things to function.
3. Use a winlogon crack. Believe it or not this makes a speed difference on bootup.
4. Use XP pro not home, so u can do some of the stuff mentioned above.
5. use toolbarcop, and remove everything in there.
6. Don't use Norton, or Mcafee. They bloat the system down like there WAS a virus on it. Norton is considered a virus by my repair shop, and is removed upon exiting the building.
7. Turn off system restore, and dump c:\windows\system32\dllcache
8. Don't use cheapo HP printers and install their garbageware.
9. The result? My build of XP. It will be on piratebay in a few days. It is 450mb. Upon install it is 900mb.
10. Avoid venders like HP, compaq, and Dell that load spyware on the machine out of the factory. Don't use factory disks. FTF (Format the Fucker) and load XP from scratch with a Winlite modd'd copy, and load the drivers. Then load your software.
11. Avoid walmart PCs. Especially the compaqs that take 20 minutes to boot up, and are substandard to a 10 year old machine. Then charge $80 an hour to work on them. The cheaper they are. The more i charge.
12 WHEN YOU ARE DONE. Ghost it to DVD or CD. Then boot from that CD/DVD, and re-ghost (I use ghost 7 corporate) the hard drive from the CD / DVD. This makes a huge difference because it aligns the data on the HD correctly. Try it, and you will see.
My largest argument is WHY shoould anyone have to do all the crap I mentioned above to make Windows run decent? My 7 year old mac takes 10 seconds to boot from a clean install of Tiger.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. - Jefferson
Slashdot is for faggots. do us all a favor and go gargle bleach, virgins.
-gjr
What can happen? You did not quote the post you are replying to and the retarded moderation system has hidden the post you are replying to, thus your reply makes no sense whatsoever. If posts on slashdot are to make any sense at all, they absolutely must include a quote of the post that they are replying to for as long as slashdot insists on totally destroying continuity with the moderation system that renders most threads incomprehensible in the default view.
Slashdot clearly must have bandwidth to waste if they expect us all to reload every thread at threshold - 1 nested or a similar view after the default view has loaded in order to make a thread readable. At that, pagination on -1 nested is badly broken and replies to posts early in a thread with many replies have a tendency to disappear altogether. I find it rather shameful that a geek/tech website functions so poorly, and I find it particularly ironic when people laud the values of perl/mod_perl when slashdot, as the most popular example of its use, while useable, is so badly broken.
Short version: quote the post you are replying to or you'll make no sense here.
Whatever. I stopped using hibernate with my Dell c400 because of the following scenario:
* Use windows XP
* Hibernate
* Restart from hibernation
Then, around 95 time on 100:
* Desktop appear
But, in 5% cases:
* Machine freezes (but have started written stuff to the hard drive)
* Hard shutdown
* Startup
* If I forget to choose a to reboot: Restore from hard drive, but data structures on the hard drive have been modified
* Additional crap is written to the hard drive
* File system trashed
Now:
* Normal reboot freezes
* Reboot in safe mode freezes
* Reboot from XP media in recovery console mode freezes when accessing the C: drive
* Re-format and re-install XP
So, now, I am typing this from a mac book pro, which, while not perfect, will not put me throught such mess.
-1 Troll huh?
Its a simple statement of fact. If you see that as a troll, then you have got issues man. I have reported all of the mentioned issues to slashcode, yet all the issues continue to be ignored.
I am not trolling, simply stating fact, and trying to be helpful by suggesting that people quote posts they are replying to in order to make slashdot threads readable despite the moderation system.
I do not expect a reply and am not trolling. Bitching, yes. Trolling, no.
Nice spamming of your own link there faggot, I'm glad someone pointed you out as a liar before I did.
Right. Here come the morons. While you're at it figure out why anaesthesia was necessary for the lobotomy they did on you.
Eat a dick, douchebag.
-gjr
My computer boots to Windows XP's CTRL-ALT-DEL screen, from a powered-down state, in 8 seconds.
;)
Maybe upgrading from a PII is the answer to your problems?