I don't drink tea!!

[skimber]

Not being a tea drinker i can't go and put the kettle on while I wait for my HCPC to start up before i can watch a film.

Does anyone have any tips for making a HCPC boot up quicker?

Cheers

Simon

[alanrob]

YES! Uninstall everything It'll boot up in no time, but you'll have nothing to run

Seriously, remove anything that isn't required - If you have virus protection and don't use the PC for anything other than playing DVD's then remove it as it's the worst cause of load delay at the start of Windows.

Also, remove any Office suite programs (word/excel etc..).
Just have the programs you require installed.
Remove internet programs, don't have a backdrop on your desktop. Simple things like that add to the boot time.

Get yourself a copy of TweakUI to remove any unwanted programs from loading when Windows starts.

If all else fails then do a rebuild. Low level format your HD then reinstall Windows and only the software you require.

Fastest boot time I've had on my Win98se partition was 40secs from boot menu, for Win2k it's around 70secs.

[tryingtimes]

Using the bios to disable any unused sockets (serial, usb, parallel, etc) also helps.
The biggest thing can be modems and network cards. If you don't need them then get rid of them.
If you do need them I think you can adjust the boot time by looking into how long they wait to find a network before starting.

I've got mine (win98SE) down to about 17 secs without much effort.
If I switch my pc on and then walk round and do the projector; by the time the projector displays an image, the PCs already waiting

[alanrob]

17 secs ????

Even a fresh install of Win98 takes over 30 secs to boot up.
You must have it stripped to the bare bones

I had a program once that you could use to install Win98 without internet stuff etc.. Just a bare Win98 (can't remember the name of the program at the mo - if it comes back to me I'll post it here) even it's boot time was over 20 secs.

BTW, your start up will take longer than 17 secs becuase a standard motherboard bios takes a good 10 secs to check for IDE devices. If you are adding this into your time then I'd love to know how you did it m8

I'm always on a look out for a faster way to boot Win98 (my games partition on my PC )

[tryingtimes]

I'll time it tonight (it might even be faster as I've just done a clean install).
I'll break it down for you so that you can see where I'm saving the time.
I just made sure that it has nothing on it that I don't use and disabled all the unused ports.

The biggest pain at the moment is that I have to 'ok' the talisman '30 day trial' box and the powerstrip 'tips' 6 second wait!
I guess spending money sorts these out!

Jeff was looking into the world of booting from flash ram/rom but I think it was too expensive at the moment.

[Rob.Screene]

256Mb Compact Flash Media (x10 Speed) 76.00+VAT= £89.30

I don't know how we would connect it up to boot from. I've only seen USB and PCMCIA interfaces.

Rob.

[tryingtimes]

There's a few adapters that allow a compact flash card to act as a true IDE drive (seehere )
Would that do the trick?

[tryingtimes]

I think the total contents of my hard drive are about 325 Mb but I'm sure I could get rid of a bit more!
It would certainly make for a compact, quiet and fast unit.

[skimber]

I remember a while back i was looking into building an MP3 player for the car... never did anything about it but i do remember seeing things like an adaptor that lets you plug in compact flash as an IDE drive

Not much good for something like PowerVCR tho...

[skimber]

Note to self:

Must type faster

[alanrob]

Ok - just done some testing with my other machine and a fresh install of Win98 with no ports enabled in the bios took 37secs to boot from power on.

Fresh install of Win2k takes 69secs.

My current set up of Win98se takes 1min24secs to boot from power on and my Win2k takes 2mins35secs to boot up.

So if you can get 17 seconds then please let me know.

[tryingtimes]

Right, timed it last night (I was starting to have doubts!)
18 seconds to have mouse control on full desktop
1 more second for Powerstrip to kick in and the projector to sync.

I don't know where the extra second has come from. The only hardware difference is an m-audio AP24/96 sound card.
It's got LESS software - although TheaterTek and Ghost are new and so is Talisman (not running in shell mode). DVD Region Killer and Powerstrip are in the startup menu.

The only Bios differences are that I've turned off all the monitoring functions (temp, fans, etc)

I guess it's a second that I'll never get back!

Anyway, it's fast enough for me not to care that much any more.

Full spec can be seen on SEVENFOOTFILM

When installing 98SE I chose custom install and turned virtually everything off. It doesn't seem to do any harm!

Also the HD is pretty fast - that's bound to make a difference!


Alex

[alanrob]

Wow m8 If only I could get that sort of time

Maybe it's the m/board CPU combo that makes the difference.
I'm using an Abit board with a Celeron500.

My fresh install of Win98se was custom also and all option taken out. All monitoring etc.. on the board off and it still takes 37secs.

I also removed all cards except my AGP Geforce2 Gfx card (no sound or Scsi) and it's running on an IDE100 h/drive. It's got to be the CPU & m/board combo that's doing the biz. Guess I'll just have to get that P4 I've been promising myself for months

BTW, it takes my PC 14 secs to get to the Win98 boot logo screen. Are you taking your boot time from power on (?) or from point that logo appears?

[Rob.Screene]

Check for an IDE init delay setting in the bios.
I think some are defaulted to 10 second wait. You might be able to set that to 0 and see if your hard disk initialised quickly enough. I think many do.

cheers,
Rob.

[alanrob]

Cheers m8 - I'll check it once I get home tonight