Will Additional Memory or Anything Else Speed Total Boot Time Up?

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Peachesbackwards

Member
For clarification, by boot time I mean the time it takes for my desktop to be fully loaded & my Norton Security to go on, so I can actually do a function on my computer, like get on the Internet. Right now on my HP Media Center computer which has 1 gig of RAM, 120 gig hardrive (of which about 105 gigs of space are free), XP operating system, it takes about 6-10 minutes to be fully booted up. Will adding more memory or any other device speed up my boot time? I constantly review my startup items using MSCONFIG & try to not have my desktop super overloaded with icons. I also defrag my hard drive regularly & have software that checks and corrects registry errors.

Anyway, will additional memory or anything else make my boot time faster, or is the 6-10 minute time, par for the course? Any suggestions appreciated. Thank You.
 
Additional memory is not the problems to be looking at! Hardwares failing, faulty memory, a weak hard drive, shaky bios or weak battery on the board, and even a power supply going bad are more likely causes! XP will run fine with 1gb of good memory with a small amount of startups even though Norton is often commented on as a resource grabber?! Hardware, battery, supply, or ?
 
on my computer it counts the RAM, if i add more it speeds up POST for me. and yeah, if your HDD takes a few seconds to detect then its probably weak, bad, or something. and you say you defrag... do you disk cleanup? and too many files n your HDD slows it down. get TUNEXP. scan for viruses, trojans, and spyware/adware too.
 
With those specs, unless you have a very slow processor, the problem sounds more like software than hardware. I mean my freshly loaded test system(1.4GHz, 128MB RAM, 20GB HD) boots in just a few seconds. However, there's really nothing that loads during startup either.
 
By using the advice given by "ADE" if you "uncheck" the box labeled (HP Organize) assuming your HP uses this program too, it can take off almost 1 minute of boot-up time. Best of Luck!
 
Again By Boot Time I Mean full Loading of the Programs

To reiterate, by boot time I mean the time it takes for everything to load so you can actually use your computer. It takes me around 7 minutes or so to do so. Is this normal?
 
Peachesbackwards said:
To reiterate, by boot time I mean the time it takes for everything to load so you can actually use your computer. It takes me around 7 minutes or so to do so. Is this normal?
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Uhm.
no.

Takes mine about 40 seconds :]
Was about half that when I freshly built and installed the OS :]
 
Peachesbackwards said:
To reiterate, by boot time I mean the time it takes for everything to load so you can actually use your computer. It takes me around 7 minutes or so to do so. Is this normal?
Click to expand...

Do you have a printer or any other additional devices connected to the system there? Even with only 128mb and a few items loading you never see it take that long for XP especially to load. XP was the first in line to load the desktop the fastest. Vista only offers a slight edge to that. Any printer, printer/scanner/fax, or how about a usb adapter with extra devices there? A faulty device connected or bad expansion card can stall a system as well as a Windows boot problem.
 
I don't think he means when on desk top. he mean like when you press the button, that little loading bar that happens before you even get to log on screen.
 
Good tip About Attachments to the Computer

Thanks, I never thought about that. I had an external DVD burner attached by USB to the front of my computer which also has a built in DVD burner (I use this occasionally as a second DVD drive). Out of curiosity, I yanked the USB cable from the computer. I was downloading at the time & all of a sudden, my downloading speeds were incredibly fast. I don't know if this was a coincidence or not. As to my boot/startup time, I'll report on this board later, if this made the startup time so much faster.
 
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Peachesbackwards said:
For clarification, by boot time I mean the time it takes for my desktop to be fully loaded & my Norton Security to go on, so I can actually do a function on my computer, like get on the Internet. Right now on my HP Media Center computer which has 1 gig of RAM, 120 gig hardrive (of which about 105 gigs of space are free), XP operating system, it takes about 6-10 minutes to be fully booted up. Will adding more memory or any other device speed up my boot time? I constantly review my startup items using MSCONFIG & try to not have my desktop super overloaded with icons. I also defrag my hard drive regularly & have software that checks and corrects registry errors.

Anyway, will additional memory or anything else make my boot time faster, or is the 6-10 minute time, par for the course? Any suggestions appreciated. Thank You.
Click to expand...

remove norton...it takes waay too much memory...and just slows ur computer down...even with 1gb ram...try avg or nod32
 
ADE said:
I don't think he means when on desk top. he mean like when you press the button, that little loading bar that happens before you even get to log on screen.
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Peachesbackwards was referring to the total time taken from pressing the power button until reaching the desktop where Windows finishes loading and you can then open any program or browser. It wasn't limited to the load from post tests to loading to the logon point. You can actually edit the system registry to see Windows load directly to the desktop if you are the admin with no other user accounts.

Peachesbackwards said:
Thanks, I never thought about that. I had an external DVD burner attached by USB to the front of my computer which also has a built in DVD burner (I use this occasionally as a second DVD drive). Out of curiosity, I yanked the USB cable from the computer. I was downloading at the time & all of a sudden, my downloading speeds were incredibly fast. I don't know if this was a coincidence or not. As to my boot/startup time, I'll report on this board later, if this made the startup time so much faster.
Click to expand...

While generally a drive connected by usb would be ignored until the usb drivers are loaded by Windows having power options set for power on by mouse/keyboard which many are usb or flash drives would be the exception unless the bios on that make and model board is actively looking there for an OS before the hard drive. Hopefully the drive is not seeing a fault of some type.
 
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