Enhance Vista Boot Times!

[kyle2020]

Enable all cores for Windows Vista start up!​

Im guessing that most didnt realise that vista auto selects to use just 1 core of a processor when its booting - well if you didnt, heres the fix!

First of all, go into your start menu and type 'msconfig' minus the quotation marks:

You'll then be brought to this screen:

At which point you'll be needing to go onto the 'boot' tab - click on 'advanced' on this screen:

click the tick box 'number of processors' box and drop the menu down to select how many cores your processor has - for me i would pick 4, for a C2D owner you would select 2

Now when you boot, vista will use all of the cores in your processor, rather than just one. And yes, it helps, cut my boot times down by 5 seconds or so

So, a little fix from your friend, kyle.

 

[newtekie1]

But what happens if you set it to 4, then swap out your quad core for a dual?

 

[Asylum]

Nice post kyle...Thats one i didnt know!!

 

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

Nice little tip.

 

[Asylum]

But what happens if you set it to 4, then swap out your quad core for a dual?

You set it back before you swap!!

 

[wolf2009]

this is a myth,


it doesn't work



READ THIS

http://lifehacker.com/5033518/debunking-common-windows-performance-tweaking-myths




According to that site

Make Vista Use Multiple Cores to Speed Up Boot Time

This bogus tip made the rounds recently and almost everybody got caught including Lifehacker and big brother site Gizmodo... although commenters called it out quickly on both sides, and the editors updated the posts. (That's yet another reason to always participate in the comments here.)

According to this tip, you were supposed to use MS Config to modify the "Number of processors" drop-down on the Boot tab. The problem is that this setting is only used for troubleshooting and debugging, to be able to determine if there is a problem with a single processor, or for a programmer to test their code against a single core while running on a multi-core system. Windows will use all your processors by default without this setting.

 

[kyle2020]

I can say from doing it and timing that it does, so believe what you will haha.

 

[Bigjohn]

Better solution -- Use XP Pro.... <GRIN>

 

[wolf2009]

^^^ Not really

I can say from doing it and timing that it does, so believe what you will haha.

i believe vista has a record of all the boot times, do you mind looking into them ?

 

[Black Panther]

I'm going to try it out.

However, in your screenshot it says "Number of Processors" and it is set to 1.
Now, isn't a quad core still 1 processor?
Sure it has 4 cores, but it's still one processor......

I'd be more inclined to believe it works if it said "Number of Cores"...

 

[tzitzibp]

I ll give it a shot, anyway!

 

[kyle2020]

I'm going to try it out.

However, in your screenshot it says "Number of Processors" and it is set to 1.
Now, isn't a quad core still 1 processor?
Sure it has 4 cores, but it's still one processor......

I'd be more inclined to believe it works if it said "Number of Cores"...

That was my belief, however i have asked several other tech guys and they agree, plus it works for me so it must be doing something! haha

 

[Black Panther]

It works.

I timed with a stopwatch the time it takes for my laptop from pressing the power button to displaying the desktop picture.

It takes one minute 13 seconds.

After doing kyle2020's suggestion, the time taken was one minute 4 seconds.

So that means my load times improved by 9 seconds.
I don't think I'd have noticed the difference hadn't I used a stopwatch though...

kyle2020 -- by how much did your loading times improve?

 

[MilkyWay]

cheers i guess ill give it a go

 

[Darknova]

That was my belief, however i have asked several other tech guys and they agree, plus it works for me so it must be doing something! haha

I did this. It did nothing. All it does is make it so Vista recognises that amount of cores, no more, no less. You might shave a few seconds, but do you count boot-time as from power-on to first seeing desktop, or to when it's useable, because that can change on a whim.

 

[Black Panther]

do you count boot-time as from power-on to first seeing desktop

That's what I did. The difference in my case was 9 seconds, though as I said I doubt I'd have seen the difference without a stopwatch.

Did all those who say this didn't work for them use a stopwatch?

I'm going to leave the pc like this. 9 seconds might be a little, but it's always time gained!
Someone could always come up with an idea how to shave off another 9 seconds here and there... so it could add up.

 

[DualCpuUser]

The procs are put in to protected mode and all cores setup and released early in the boot process, and then any and evey thread can run on any proc.

If you want to understand NT get "Windows Internals" and if you can't understand from cover to cover, stay out of the registry and stop coming up with this to get others to follow along like sheep.

Also prove it to yourself with a debugger, if you do not know how, then re-read para #2
-R

 

[Darknova]

That's what I did. The difference in my case was 9 seconds, though as I said I doubt I'd have seen the difference without a stopwatch.

Did all those who say this didn't work for them use a stopwatch?

I'm going to leave the pc like this. 9 seconds might be a little, but it's always time gained!
Someone could always come up with an idea how to shave off another 9 seconds here and there... so it could add up.

I count boot time as to when it's useable. IE everything is loaded up and I don't have to wait 5, 10, 15 seconds for Opera to load. That is always different, because depending on what I was doing before shut-down it might lead to longer boot-up times, or maybe Vista is just having an off-day and decides to take it's time

 

[Black Panther]

Check out this site. It lists a lot of other 'speed up vista boot time' tricks you can do, including the OP's idea.

Some things I already do, like defragging the registry, disabling startup programs, TMM and logging in automatically to my user account.

However I learnt that system restore creates a restore point at every system startup so I disabled that.

 

[Lillebror]

Why should it speed up the bootup process? the boot process isent even multi threaded :s it loads one driver at a time, on one proces at a time - and vista is so new, that not even microsoft is gonna make a os that cant see how many cores you got.

 

[lemonadesoda]

I dont know whether this is true or false. Perhaps more users would like to "stopwatch" their boots. However, please record at least 3 timings with and without to get a reasonable average and range under each condition.

For 2K3 and XP users, the option is there too:

According to MS, the option is to DISABLE processors, not ENABLE processors. So I'm doubtful that it really makes anything other than a placebo effect.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963892.aspx

 

[kyle2020]

I took the article from Custom PC, thought id share it, thats all. It has worked for me, however little - it will vary from person to person, obviously (HDD speeds, RAM ammounts, clockspeeds, etc) so ones results may not be representative of the rest!