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Jul 19

Decrease Your Computer’s Boot Time Using Free Software From Microsoft

This article was written on February 28, 2006 by CyberNet.

Did you know that your computer is supposed to boot up in less than 30 seconds, and that 30 seconds is the time from when you push the power button to the time that you are able to use the computer. The hibernate startup time should be 20 seconds and the resume from standby time should be 5 seconds. Like most people, that is not a reality and as computers become bloated then the startup times get longer and longer.

Years ago Microsoft realized this problem and offered a solution. The free solution that Microsoft released is known as BootVis. For some people the software does not offer much of a performance increase, but for others it does. I would say that my startup time was decreased about 20%, which isn’t bad for free software.

Another really cool feature of the software is the ability to graphically see how long each program takes to startup on your computer and at what time it actually begins to startup. It shows a block on the graph for each program that you have run at startup, which really helps you to identify the bottlenecks in your system.

Here is a quick tutorial on how you can use BootVis to optimize your system (repeat about every 2 months):

Download BootVis.
Install BootVis from the downloaded file.
Run BootVis.
Select Trace => Next Boot + Driver Delays.
Click OK on the Trace Repetitions dialog box that pops up.
PLEASE NOTE: Your system will now reboot itself.
After your system reboots, DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING because BootVis will automatically startup after it has finished examining the computer.
After BootVis has finished starting up, Select Trace => Optimize System.
Your computer will take longer than usual to reboot this ONE time. After your computer has rebooted, BootVis will display a screen telling you that it is “optimizing your system”. Your computer’s startup has now been optimized. Enjoy!