What are the "sure" methods of reducing windows startup time?

What are the "sure" methods of reducing windows startup time?


My bootup speed is annoyingly slow. I know there are a few tips n tricks for reducing the time it takes to reach the desktop from the initial power on.


But what are the most effective of these tricks or hacks?


My details:

Windows XP Home running on a 256RAM, 2.5Ghz P4 laptop (with wireless internet). The computer is used mostly for surfing and P2P.

Yep. The tips that A4XGR suggested are good.

A good website for checking what programs / files / etc... are and if it may be okay to remove from the startup list, you can find over at:

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm


A good and free little utility, that I use myself, which has a few options such as checking for bad entries and cleaning up the registry in the "Issues" selection, getting rid of uneccesary files (such as temporary internet files, etc...), a "Startup Manager" under the tools options: is CCleaner.

You can read about the various features of it at:

http://www.ccleaner.com/features.aspx


And you can download a free copy over at:

http://www.ccleaner.com/download/


Of course it's always wise to make a "System Restore" checkpoint before making any changes to the registry. CCleaner also gives you the option to backup the registry before making any changes to it as well.


I might also suggest that you do a "Defrag" (as A4XGR suggested as well) of your hard-drive/s occasionally (I defrag mine about once a month).

You can usually get to this from clicking on "Start", then select "All programs", "Accessories", "System Tools", "Disk Defragmentter". Before doing a disk-defrag it might be wise to disable or shut down all programs and applications running on the computer (as programs running in the background may interfere with the defrag process. If that happens, then you could try doing the defrag from "Safe-Mode" as well to help insure all background applications are disabled and won't interfere), and then you need to leave it alone to let it do it's thing, which, depending on the size of the hard-drive and how much it needs to defrag, it make take a couple hours or more. So, perhaps it's good to do a defrag and then do something else that's not using that computer.. eg: watch a movie, going out for a while, read a book, sleep, etc.. ;)


A few other little tweaks that may help boost start-up speed (as well as overall performance):


Right-Click on the "My Computer" icon. Select "Properties".

If you don't like Windows updating "Automatically" for you, click on the "Automatic Updates" tab and select the "Turn off automatic updates" option. (you can still check for updates though, just this turns it off from doing it automatically for you).


Click on the "Advanced" tab. Then click the "Perfomance" button. Select the visual settings that suit you and also turning off some of those features will help to speed up the computer as well.

From ther performance box, click on the "Advanced" tab and select "Background Services" for processor scheduling and then "OK" it.


You might want to turn-off the "Error Reporting" too.


There's a few more "tweaks" you can do as well, but I'll leave it at that as I gotta go get my dinner now.


Best wishes. :-)

The best way is to reduce services running in the background as they all need to start first and they're not related to MSCONFIG.


Many services are not needed, but on the other hand changing them without knowing what you do can be fatal to windows, so make a "Ghost" of your installation before you start playing around with the services!


My boottime is 19 seconds, but I have a brand new AMD with 2 GB of professional matched pair RAM modules, 2 Seagate SATA-II harddrives in RAID 0


I could make it faster as I have a U320 SCSI Card, but the harddrives are still too expensive.