i just installed vista and am not sure of the average boot up time or good boot time, from boot/bios screen where you press del to enter setup, to windows desktop.
With XP you had to add a pair of string entries into the system registry itself to see the automatic logon to the administrator account or see the user logon prompt screen along the way in order to reach the desktop. The Welcome screen is still seen when using the auto login tweak there. With Vista by default you go direct to the desktop unless requiring the user name/password prompt to appear.
There's no welcome screen that comes up so the desktop is simply seen sooner while things are still loading in the background. Both versions seems to take the same amount of time to fully load from what is seen with the dual boot here.
The welcome screen seen with Vista is not a boot splash screen but one seen when arriving at the desktop that comes up like an explorer menu screen. That can be unchecked to avoid the need to close that every time you boot up to simply see the desktop.
That's one of the usual MS annoyances they like to stick into each new version of Windows! "gee? I might not be able to find my way around the desktop without it?! ddaa...."![]()
My neighbor has a laptop running Vista and 2 GB. It takes soooo long for it to come out of hibernate. But, it does not take that long for it to startup.
That's simply a quick splash screen before the final loading of the desktop not the actual welcome screen you would have to close out each time unless unchecking the box. Microsoft loves adding those in anyways! http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2347-10877_11-61343-61345.html?seq=1
would having a SATA HD over a IDE HD make any difference
Yes, unless you're using a SATA to IDE converter, and if you're comparing ATA133 to SATAI, there's not THAT much difference.
SATA FTW![]()