What is your boot time?

[zridling]

Out of curiosity, because I know there are lots of variables here.

[jgpaiva]

In my case, that depends. Until i get to the windows logon screen, it's pretty fast (10 seconds?). But then, from the moment i input the password until it fully stops.... A whole minute (or more!) goes by.

Unfortunatelly, i still can't find who to blame for that

[J-Mac]

I've had boot lag issues for quite some time here.  I spent some time trying to find a utility - any utility - tha would log all events during bootup but there doesn't appear to be any.  MS Bootvis, which is not supported by MS since XP was released, can do this for some users, but I have found that it cannot complete its goal if you are running a dual core processor, which I am.

Process Monitor is supposed to be able to do this also, but each time I try it crashes before I even get to a boot.  (Thought it was just my PC but I see others now having the same issues with ProcMon).

Other than those two I can find nothing that gives a good picture of just what occurs during boot up. Should be something that can tell you what starts in what order, and where any head-banging occurs - if any - during boot up.  Seems like pretty valuable info to me, but no one else seems to care much about it!  I remember last year asking if anyone knew of any such app and I got a few seemingly condescending posts telling me that XP manages its own startup well and if mine is not then I have apparently been misbehaving with my PC. So I just quit that thread!

So in this age of knowing everything that goes on in our PCs, boot up activities are still nothing more than a guessing game.  Weird!

Jim

[Renegade]

I'd say over 2m, but not because the actual "boot" takes that long, but because I don't want to do anything until all the startup software is loaded, and that's more than 2 minutes. The boot itself is less.

What you mean by "boot" may be different depending on how you look at it. Boot as for the OS, or boot as for 'ready to use with everything loaded'?

[J-Mac]

Renegade,

I guess then that I mean Yes, and Yes! The boot itself is close to the two minute mark - I would have to time it but my perception is that its right around there.

And if I add my startup items, well - it's tough to say now.  I am using Chameleon Startup Manager to delay a number of startup entries; that way they get spread out and all are not banging heads trying to beat each other to the finish line.  So excluding all that I have a delay set for, it is probably about another two minutes at least after the bootup itself is done.

Jim

[lanux128]

going by Renegade's definition, my PC boots in about 20 seconds but is ready to use only after about 3 mins.

[icekin]

Boots in 40 seconds, but ready to use in 90. My start up programs load fast.

[nosh]

I see the wallpaper after exactly 1 minute. Another 1:30 for the whole show to commence.

[a_lunatic]

I've had boot lag issues for quite some time here.  I spent some time trying to find a utility - any utility - tha would log all events during bootup but there doesn't appear to be any. 
Jim

-J-Mac (January 30, 2008, 11:27 PM)

Here is one not sure how good it is have only used it once quite a while ago BootlogXP & has 30 day evaluation period & Single license is $19.95

[f0dder]

Dunno how long it takes, and I generally only boot my computer once a day, so it's not like it matters a whole lot. But I guess it's less than two minutes from power-on until the desktop is idle & ready for use.

Btw, if bootvis has trouble with multicore, you can temporarily add /ONECPU to your boot.ini.

[mouser]

since i only reboot once every couple of weeks these days, i must admit i don't really care about boot time.

i do however have a pc in my bedroom which i put on standby and wake up from sleep regularly. and the turn off and turn on time is under 3 seconds (see my post about it here: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=11991.0) is done using the physical on/off button.  couldn't be simpler or faster.

[Josh]

I am in the same boat as mouser. Boot time doesnt matter much to me as I do it so infrequently. When I do reboot, its about 15-20 seconds from power on to Vista login prompt and then another minute while my startup programs load. I have quite a few startup programs so I dont blame vista for a slow start. Vista on its own is pretty fast to boot.

[iphigenie]

my boot time is pretty quick, it's the "time between log in and actual availability of the system" which is long (too many services and autostarts, and yes I want almost all of them!)

[Darwin]

I'm in the same boat as mouser and f0dder. Actually, I am a reformed paranoid when it comes to boot time. I'd say from pressing the power button to log-in screen is about 30 secs and then to desktop with all programmes loaded another 2 to 3 minutes. But, like my "boat mates"  , I reboot relatively infrequently and don't sweat this anymore.

[iphigenie]

I dont reboot very much, but typically when I reboot it is because something crashed or locked up and I am then pretty eager to be up and running to pick up whatever got interrupted, and terribly impatient!

[jgpaiva]

Ok... So i tweaked some stuff (omg, can you believe that kaspersky is set to scan "startup objects" ON STARTUP? how stupid is that?) and retimed the thing.
My first guess was way off, it took 50s to get to login screen and 3 minutes (in total) to get to a full stop.

[Lashiec]

That makes more sense, I was thinking into stealing your laptop for those 10 seconds . Scanning startup objects is pretty normal for an antivirus, every other one does the same, as that's one of the key moments in which malware starts to act up after infecting your computer.

My rig takes between 1 and 1.5 min between pressing the button and it finishes loading the startup programs. Of course, my boot sequence is pretty light in software, as most of the software I'd use on a daily basis (Locate, Rainlendar, AM-Notebook, etc.) is launched when I need it, they're only a few keystrokes away. They launch faster, and don't delay the other apps

[Darwin]

J-Mac - I just installed the demo for BootLogXP and it worked! This following an attempt to use ProcessMonitor (which resulted in me having to boot into SafeMode to recover from  ).

My main complaint so far with BootLogXP is that the documentation is WOEFULLY inadequate, which makes interpreting the results difficult.

Here's a screenshot:

What is your boot time?

Note that the more than 10 minute boot time is reflective of the fact that I have SpySweeper set to start 6 minutes after other programmes have started. I run BitDefender in RealTime mode and scan at 5 pm with it and use SpySweeper to monitor Spyware and to do a full scan at 12:30. Overkill? More than likely...

[jgpaiva]

Lashiec: i don't mean scaning the actions of the software, that makes sense.
What i meant was that it scans the executables themselves, and the disk boot sectors, something that doesn't actually need to be done at that time, and i have delayed for 10 minutes (at the time, it was set to 1minute: the time where all the programs were starting).

[Darwin]

Hmmm... funny how looking at a screenshot of your system on the web can force you to see things you'd otherwise miss... Unless I'm not reading the "diagram" correctly. Spysweeper is starting within seconds of my system starting up, not the 6 minutes I specified in the latest version of WinPatrol (14.0.1.2007) [offtopic] The latest version of WinPatrol has remedied the CPU resource issues that forced me to uninstall version 11   [/offtopic].

I'll have to investigate this... Of course, rational people would simply remove SpySweeper from the boot sequence altogether. I'll probably do this and run scans with it manually.

[cthorpe]

I get from a cold start to Vista login in about 20 seconds.  From there, I have a usable machine in about 40 seconds.  A few things are still starting up for about 20 seconds more, but its not anything that causes the machine to be unusable.  Of course, my PC is only a few weeks old, so it better be fast.

Before I installed any additional startup programs, I was booting to Vista login in around 20 seconds, and getting fully started in less that 20 more after entering my password, so Vista is very quick when starting.

[Lashiec]

Lashiec: i don't mean scaning the actions of the software, that makes sense.
What i meant was that it scans the executables themselves, and the disk boot sectors, something that doesn't actually need to be done at that time, and i have delayed for 10 minutes (at the time, it was set to 1minute: the time where all the programs were starting).

-jgpaiva (January 31, 2008, 10:51 AM)

Ah, OK. Now that's overkill. Actually, those scheduled scans built into most security software are quite curious, it's like they're saying "Yeah, my realtime monitoring shield is pitiful, so that's why I run this scan to assure nothing got past the shield". They steal lots of resources and are woefully inadequate, because they kick in at the worst moments.

[Darwin]

Tracked the problem - once you've set a delayed start in WinPatrol you need to DISABLE the "start with windows" setting in the respective programme's options, otherwise the next time you modify the programme in any way it will re-insert itself into the startup sequence.

BootLogXP IS useful and I am slowly figuring out how to use it to analyze my system start. Academic licence is $14.95 and they offer a 30 day no limitation trial. All licences come with free upgrades for life. I'll keep playing with it. Nice find, lanux  I'll be interested to read J-Mac's experience with it, if he tries it out.

BTW - boottime with Spysweeper "correctly" delayed was 314 seconds. Of course, the "diagram" generated by BootLogXP *seems* to indicate that this time SpySweeper started loading at 63.626 seconds and that it took 4 seconds to load. WinPatrol is *supposed* to be delaying it for 5 minutes 30 seconds after boot. The other odd thing, evident in the screenshot that I posted earlier, is that it is identifying the path to my program files folder as lying on D drive, when in fact it is on C drive, along with my Windows folder... 

[Rover]

I wear 11  or 12 depending on the mfg.     OH! Boot TIME! 

My home system has a lot of crap running as Services, so Login Screen to usable system is 2+ minutes.

My system at work is worse...  first it's a laptop with a slow HD; second it is a corp. controlled system with 3.2 million domain policies and 432,000 remote management agents.
Maybe a few less than that.   

Power to Login screen is about 90 seconds, Login to useful system is 3-5 minutes.  On big update days it can be 10 minutes before the system is useful.  I usually login, wait until I can Lock the system and go get breakfast.  Love that bacon. 

[e712]

I don't know.  Whatever it is it's too long. I use hibernate when ever I can--even though, sporadically, it won't wake up .  I watch my startup reg entries with both StartupMonitor and Startup Inspector for Win. 

Based on what I've read,  I think if I could logon locally and connect later to the network things would speed up. ...need to experiment when I have time. (=I'll wait till someone else figures it out. )