Windows 7 forum: How can I make my Windows 7 machines boot up quickly?

Hi Tom,

In my business I rebuild quite a few off-lease laptops for resale. Most of the laptops I buy to re-do have newer SATA drives, so I can replace them with much faster SSDs. The price has actually dipped below $1.00 per Gigabyte in the past month. That was a big price-point for hard drives many years back too. So now you can install a SSD for such a reasonable price it's almost like a memory upgrade. I highly recommend it, but don't go below 120GB.

While you're spending money, you should also make sure that you're running a 64 bit system, and as much RAM as the laptop will handle. DDR3 RAM is also pretty inexpensive and will help to keep your laptop running at optimum speed. Of course, a fast processor helps too, but dollar for dollar you won't be disappointed with a SSD and RAM upgrade.

If you have to choose between the two, I would do the MAX RAM first and the SSD second. The other posts I've read so far have been accurate about not running start up programs you don't need. And if you're running Norton, I wouldn't use anything but Norton Internet Security. Norton has a host of programs out there and most of them are resource hogs, especially at boot time.

Remember these simple rules about start up speed.

1. The more things you have to start up and run in the background, the longer it's going to take. (Look at your taskbar on the bottom right of your screen. The more icons you see, the longer it takes to boot.)

2. The more resources your laptop has (RAM/SSD) the faster they can handle the task.

You can run tune-up programs until the cows come home and they'll only provide temporary fixes. If your system is dragging it's because something is weighing it down. You can't pull a big boulder up a mountain with a Moped, so get a bigger/faster motor and reduce the load your pulling.

The last laptop I built boots in about 15 seconds. Once on the desktop, 2 seconds to MSN.com on the internet. Other programs like Word are nearly instant. That was with an Intel 120GB SSD and 8GB RAM running Windows 7 on a clean system.

Good Luck My Friend

In my personal experience, it resulted in a much faster boot by enabling all 4 processors, but on my Xeon W3540 it then ran without recognizing the hyper-threading, i.e. the "virtual" processors. It was a poor tradeoff. I gained about 10 seconds on a 30 second boot, but hamstrung my processor. According the the MS Knowledge Base, the "number of processors" setting is for when windows doesn't recognize your multiprocessor correctly.
The maximum memory setting is for when you have to limit the memory available to windows on start, like when you run into the older systems that have 4 GB memory, but only 3GB (or some similar amount) useable, that sometimes has to be set.

Hope that clears things up a bit!

The less you write to an SSD the better. Defragging is absurd on an SSD where you have true random access to begin with -- all it does is shorten the life of the drive.

SSDs are IDEAL, however, for Windows 7, which comes very close to being a WORM (Write Once Read Mostly) installation. Just keep all your user data, including the hidden "Application Data" folders, on a regular HDD.

I can understand being wary of using CCleaner on an SSD but it really shouldn't hurt too much, and the limited capacity of most SSDs means you must occasionally clean off the cruft, and CCleaner is about as good as anything for the purpose. CCleaner doesn't do all the rewriting that a defragger does. Just make sure you only do a single pass and none of the more paranoid settings.

I tried msconfig but while there were 24 Items in the Startup, I did not recognise one of them which may have required deleting. eg. what is 'RTHDCPL' or 'jusched'.

Bill.

I echo what has been said about RAM and SSDs. It is possible to overdo it on RAM, but not easily. I run 12 GB RAM as an example, but I can't imagine going over that, if you're board even supports that much. If you can afford it, 8 GB RAM is good.
Before making any changes at all to windows config files, always make a Restore Point and always have a fresh backup.
When you have items in the startup or services sections of msconfig that you cannot identify, Google the file name or service name of the item and usually you will find out what the item is and can decide how to proceed from there. Unless you are knowledgeable, be conservative in your changes.
A program I use to manage delayed startups is Glary Utilities, a program that has most of it's useful functions free, though you can register it. It will show you your startup programs, give you an estimation of the impact on startup time and you can delay them until the system has started. I have all my update programs set to start no less than 60 seconds after boot, and up to 300 seconds, to spread them out. That may not be necessary for you, depends on how many startup programs you are running and need to run. Do not use the registry cleaning function if you don't know what you are doing. It's supposed to be safe, but I have personal experience that says it's not.
When it comes to disabling services (not for the faint of heart or inexperienced users), leave the Microsoft services alone. In the msconfig under services you have a check box to "Hide all Microsoft services". Use it. Unless you are an expert, don't mess with the Microsoft services. Try going into the computer's system services console (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> System Services) and changing the start-up type to "Manual" instead of "Disabled". That way if something turns out to be critical after all, it will start when it is called upon by other services or programs. It's a safer way to do things.
Also, before you mess with system settings, always take a screen shot of the original settings or write them down, especially when dealing with services. If you mess them up too badly, the computer will not function correctly and it may be necessary to restore.

I hope this helps some.

Buy an APPLE... It boots up instantaneously.. .

I wanted to SAY AGAIN:
That anyone who is not well-versed or confident, and/or comfortable with messing around with Motherboard Settings, etc., you should defer to an expert. Some of the changes that need to be made, must be done in the right order so as not to render your computer, um, useless! Changing to AHCI is an important step but must be done properly.
The link I provided does a good job of explaining the steps, but make sure you READ the ENTIRE POST, as well as UNDERSTAND the STEPS.

I hope that resource link will help anyone who is considering a move from spinning to SSDrive(s).

I tried thatbecause of your post, it disabled my hyperthreading so once I booted (quite quickly), ,my system was much slower than normal. If you have hyperthreading, don't do it!

I like the no GUI boot, shaves quite a few seconds off my boot, even with my SSD! Nice tip, thank you.

Hello Tom,

I love to have a fast booting computer. Since I shut it down every night, I need to have it come alive quickly in the morning. I also used to despise doing Windows updates because of how long it would take to restart.

Before Solid State Drives (SSD) became affordable, I tried all the software tricks I'm sure you tried. CCleaner to remove junk files and clean the registry, MSCONFIG to stop certain services and programs from starting, et cetera.

My current solution is upgrading to an SSD. I bought a cheap Kingston SSD upgrade kit with enough capacity for my C-Drive. The benefit of the kit over just buying an SSD is that is came with Acronis copying software to seamlessly transfer my operating system over. Then I just installed the SSD where the hard drive was, and Windows worked fine.

Down the road, I read that to get the best performance out of an SSD, it is best to do a fresh install of Windows, with only the SSD hooked up to the computer. Apparently, Windows will optimize the installation for an SSD, which you don't get when you copy an existing install from a hard drive.

After getting everything setup on an SSD, my boot times are amazing and best of all, they are consistently amazing. I have been using the SSD as my boot drive for about a year and it still boots quick as new. Since the SSD has less storage overhead, I have been keeping the majority of my files (documents, pictures, and videos) on my old hard drive, which is installed as a secondary drive.

Like I said, I'm using a Kingston SSD and I haven't had any problems with it. I'm sure there are kits available that might be cheaper.

Good Luck,

- Maxwell

How fast or slow the computer boots up depends on several things.

1. How many programs and processes are set to load at Startup. There may be several programs or processes you don't really need to have loading every time you start your computer. For example, I only use Microsoft Office once in a while (or Open Office if you prefer it) so there's no need for it to load and run in the background. The same goes for Java Update, an item that checks frequently for available updates which, frankly, don't happen often. So, you should look at the list of programs/processes for Startup and disable those you don't need. If you are unsure about one, leave it alone. One easy way to handle this is to download and install the free CCleaner here:

http://download.cnet.com/CCleaner/3000-18512_4-10315544.html.

Run CCleaner and click on the blue toolbox icon on the left side of the window. Next, click on "Startup" on the left side of the white area. Carefully look at what's listed. Click once on an entry you want to prevent from loading then click on "Disable" on the right-hand side. Repeat that for other entries.

2. Clutter and junk files build up and cause slowdowns. In CCleaner again, click on the brush or broom icon on the left-hand side, then click on "Analyze" at the bottom of the window and wait for the progress bar at the top to reach 100%. Then click on "Run cleaner" in bottom right-hand corner.

3. Windows registry may accumulate many bogus or "orphan" entries over time. In CCleaner again, click on the blue blocks icon on the left-hand side then click "Scan for issues" at bottom left of window and wait for the scan to finish. Then click on "Fix selected issues". You'll be prompted to make a backup copy of the Registry; say Yes/OK to put a copy of the Registry in your Documents folder in case you ever need to go back to how it was ( I never have needed to). Then click "Fix now" and let it finish (a few seconds).

4. The number of items plugged into your computer and installed inside such as anything connected via USB cable, or extra hard drives, DVD drives, etc. all take a little time to be recognized and loaded at startup. You might unplug something here that you rarely use but it will only make a very small saving in boot time.

5. Norton anti-virus used to be a terrible resource hog in every computer. In recent years they have improved it and it works quite well, but it still taxes your system more than some other good anti-virus/anti-malware products. I'm not saying get rid of Norton, but something like Avast or possibly AVG would have a smaller system footprint and your computer might feel faster much of the time. (Have just one good anti-virus running in the background not two!)

6. Windows Indexing causes slowdowns on some systems at Startupthat have tons of data that needs indexing for Windows Search feature. You could try turning it off to see if the system feels faster.

7. Your hard drive may be seriously slowing the system at Startup. Last year we installed an SSD drive on both of our desktop PCs. My bootup time was reduced from one minute thirty seconds to twenty-eight seconds! The other desktop improved from one minute fifteen seconds to thirty-two seconds. Recently we installed a similar SSD in our basic Intel dual-core laptop. It used to boot quickly then take a long time to load everything after the Welcome screen, nearly two minutes. Now it's ready to use after about forty seconds. (We're using the larger capacity old laptop hard drive in a little case as an external hard drive for extra laptop storage.) Also, programs and some games launch/open very quickly using the SSD drives.

Dell desktop, Win7 Ultimate, Norton 360 v.6.0. Norton 360 will allow you to check apps in your Startup and keep checked or "delay". My i7-920 and 12 Gb DDR3 1333 RAM didn't seem to keep it booting fast, and as of January, my boot would take up to 3-1/2 minutes. So did some research (including Norton, then v. 5.0) and found I could "delay" Google, Adobe CS5 and several other apps that Norton showed as "medium" resource users. Did NOT delay Norton for obvious reasons. Now have 12 of 28 apps "delayed", and my boot time is just shy of 1 minute to usability, and the "delayed" apps load in the background. Occasionally, those delayed will interfere with using the a second large app (like email or Word), but most apps will run just fine while the "delayed" apps load. So did the same with my relatively new HP dv6t quad edition (i7-2670, 8 Gb DDR3 1333 RAM, Win7 Ultimate, Norton 360 v.6.0, and same apps except for CS5) which had started life with a 1:30 boot, and went to just over 2:00 with all the added apps loaded, now takes between :35 and :45 seconds. You can do the same thing (if you know how) in Windows, but I found the 360 Startup Cleaner very handy. I also ran the Registry Cleaner (never had a problem, though it is possible I've heard) after any new apps were loaded and verified on both computers, and found that even with major apps from big-name software, as I had discovered over the years, a new or updated app can leave a file or software link to the prior version that momentarily befuddles Windows, especially on boot. My son, an IT pro, confirmed these are good ways to clean out clutter both in Startup and in Windows in general. My Secunia PSI also helps me keep up to date, which also helps minimize clutter. Also got rid of the Sidebar and Gadgets that also delay bootup. Dick in WY

Since the release of the 2010 version, Norton AV and Norton Internet Security are MUCH improved, both in boot time and in their footprint on your system. Before that it was a real hog, but now it's probably the best of the comprehensive suites.