Windowx XP boot time down to 50 sec. not bad...

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ssdaytona · #1 Post by **ssdaytona** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 11:48 am

I've managed to get the windows boot time down to 50 seconds. I'm not sure if this is good or not. I do still have a lot of services running. Total is 41. That seems like a lot. I wonder if I can remove some of them. Most of the services are the Thinkpad utilities though.

any ideas on which I can remove?

Kenn · #2 Post by **Kenn** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 11:55 am

ssdaytona wrote:I've managed to get the windows boot time down to 50 seconds. I'm not sure if this is good or not. I do still have a lot of services running. Total is 41. That seems like a lot. I wonder if I can remove some of them. Most of the services are the Thinkpad utilities though.

any ideas on which I can remove?

Are you using bootvis? I had a ~35-second-to-usable-UI boot time with 51 processes going. Had to wait about 45 for the last-accessed wireless network to connect, and a little over 1 min for the HD to stop thrashing.

It's a bit more bloated now, but still usable before 50 seconds...

RCube · #3 Post by **RCube** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 1:03 pm

just don't shutdown and use sleep insted. Only takes a few seconds

Plinkerton · #4 Post by **Plinkerton** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 4:11 pm

I usually just use hibernate and sleep. I almost never shut down, I just restart every so often when installing stuff.

It's fast as hell using hibernate.

aleung · #5 Post by **aleung** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 4:59 pm

well.. a lot of people just shutdown their laptop even they are on the road. experienced laptop user use hibernate. everytime you shutdown and startup windows.. a lot of HD active. it hurts battery life.
I always use hibernate. unless i really need to reboot the machine.

kjarrett · #6 Post by **kjarrett** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 5:49 pm

Another vote for hibernation ... it's the only way to fly!

-kj-

Kenn · #7 Post by **Kenn** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 8:40 pm

aleung wrote:well.. a lot of people just shutdown their laptop even they are on the road. experienced laptop user use hibernate. everytime you shutdown and startup windows.. a lot of HD active. it hurts battery life.
I always use hibernate. unless i really need to reboot the machine.

Sorry, have to disagree on this one! Many knowledgeable users know that hibernate can regularly be unreliable, and I've had enough problems on restore where it's just not worth the trouble. Besides, a fresh reboot every now and then helps with the various memory leaks from misbehaving apps and such

admsteiner · #8 Post by **admsteiner** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 8:49 pm

I hibernate every time, at least 3-4 times a day and reboot every 2-3 weeks, if that often. My only problem is sometimes it doesn't hibernate (usually when wireless is on and active) so I need to finagle it.

-Adam

#9 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 9:20 pm

Hiberation works fine if the wake-up environment is the same as the hibernate environment. That is often not true for me. Right now I am on my wireless NIC. If I hibernate overnight, tomorrow morning I will be at a client on their wired NIC. Access Connections gets confused. I just found it easier my many and varied connections and clients to shut down and start in their enviroment.

BTW, if I am starting Anti-Virus, Firewall, DHCP, Access Connections, VPN, and the odd few other things, all of which I want once running, then it is hard to start fully in under about 3 minutes. Start-up time doesn't bother me - proper operation is much more important.

... JD Hurst

sugo · #10 Post by **sugo** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 9:42 pm

it's a personal perference but ... am i the only one who uses Stand By on the road?

Never a fan of hibernation (disabled on first day). On my old laptop it took just as long as fresh boot. More disk usage (minor point) aside, it seems that having more RAM means it will take longer to hibernate and unhibernate. For people with max RAM, writing 2GB and reading 2GB a few times a day doesn't sound like fun.

JHEM · #11 Post by **JHEM** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 10:36 pm

sugo wrote:it's a personal perference but ... am i the only one who uses Stand By on the road?

Far from it. I've always championed putting Thinkpads in standby rather than hibernating them.

My T40, A30p and T30 are slumbering peacefully on the credenza in my office as I type this. About the only time they're shut down is after installing new software and being forced to reboot, or if I know I won't need the machine for an extended period.

When I'm on the road, whichever machine I have with me will be in standby, when I'm not actually using it, for the duration of the trip.

Regards,

James

SCURaja · #12 Post by **SCURaja** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:04 am

wait..why would you choose to standby over hibernate? I always thought that standby was for temporarily turning off your computer .. ie: turning it off for 15-30 minutes. Otherwise i would hibernate..booting time is faster than a fresh startup AND it doesn't use as much battery power as standby.. at least i thought..unless you guys can shed some light..

ssdaytona · #13 Post by **ssdaytona** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:20 am

I switch between standby and hibernate. I use the standby feature when the laptop needs to be turned back on in < 1 hr. Hibernate is useful when it'll be off for a few hours.

I just wanted to know what I could do to trim the boot time down regardless of standby or hibernate. It's just a streamlining project that I have.

Would you believe that I have my system restore CD down to 650MB? It's a ghosted image of a fresh install of winxp plus drivers, firefox, office 2003, antivirus, powerdvd, and nero. The guy that I bought the Thinkpad from gave me a winxp pro install CD (1 CD) with all the drivers on it. I took it a step further by ghosting the c: drive so that I wouldn't even have to re-install.

DrSmile · #14 Post by **DrSmile** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:13 am

I have the same problems with Access Connections not recognizing a new network after hibernate, it takes a few manual forced retries for it to log on properly. Also my palm hotsync app sometimes will not sync over the IR port after waking up my T40 from hibernation.

I put up with both of these problems as they are actually an improvement over the previous versions of Access Connection which were horribly flawed (not functional), and I'm happy enough to finally get my Samsung i500 syncing with the laptop after hours of messing with the laptop's IR settings.

The only other oddball problem I've encountered with this laptop is the disappearing quicklaunch icons which this forum helped me solve! If Access Connections had Turbo G support I would mind putting up with the hibernate problem even less...

#15 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 8:38 am

DrSmile wrote:I have the same problems with Access Connections not recognizing a new network after hibernate, it takes a few manual forced retries for it to log on properly. <snip>

Hibernate, it seems to me, is supposed to restore the system to the state it was at when it hibernated. So I don't really expect a dynamic application to know that the environment changed over the hibernation. That is true for suspend as well. That is why I shut down most of the time.

I do hibernate overnight occasionally on the weekend and that seems to work. I do standby occasionally as well.
... JD Hurst

benz · #16 Post by **benz** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 8:43 am

I would have to say I sleep more than I hibernate or shut down....I can't remember the last time I rebooted

If you press Crtl+Alt+Del and look at the "Windows Security" box that pops up (Lock Computer, Log Off, Shut down, etc.), it shows the last logon date - mine says 11/28/2004!

rocky01 · #17 Post by **rocky01** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 9:54 am

the comments on hibernation and standby are interesting to some degree but slightly OT --

someone can surely provide clarity with original question asked: which IBM Thinkpad features\specific services can safely be terminated or at least put into manual rather than automatic mode in order to trim back use of system resources? Normally no more than 32 services should be running in XP for best results:

e.g., the more services are running in the background, the less throughput one gets with DSL, esp since windows will always use as much memory as it can no matter if you have 512MB or even 1GB of physical memory. that's more than enough motivation to shut off uncecessary bells and whistles -- neat and golly-gee-whiz factors be [censored] IMO

#18 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:49 pm

rocky01 wrote: someone can surely provide clarity with original question asked: which IBM Thinkpad features\specific services can safely be terminated or at least put into manual rather than automatic mode in order to trim back use of system resources? Normally no more than 32 services should be running in XP for best results:

e.g., the more services are running in the background, the less throughput one gets with DSL, esp since windows will always use as much memory as it can no matter if you have 512MB or even 1GB of physical memory. that's more than enough motivation to shut off uncecessary bells and whistles -- neat and golly-gee-whiz factors be [censored] IMO

Are you quite sure of your facts? I have 67 processes running on my ThinkPad (and 47 running on my IBM Desktop). Both are XP Pro. Both have about 400Mb free memory (out of 768Mb in the systems). Both machines run at less than 2 percent CPU 99 percent of the time. I get no perceptible degredation in my wired cable service. I do see some slowness in my wireless service, but there must be some impact of WPA-PSK (TKIP) and the key changing all the time and being checked.

As I noted before (I think it might have been this thread), I don't show the system tray icons on most IBM applications (Access Connections excepted). Since the IBM apps are running, I don't think eliminating the system tray icon affects performance.

I think your basic thesis that IBM applications are slowing us down is flawed. If they are slowing you down, you might want to upgrade, service or otherwise tune the settings to prevent resource consumption.

Just a thought, and your particular mileage may vary.
... JD Hurst

rocky01 · #19 Post by **rocky01** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 8:02 pm

you're looking at the wrong measure, don't focus in on cpu usage. physical memory - total and available - is a far more critical ratio and it's located on the same task manager menu as the one you're viewing. also it's well accepted -- yes even by MS -- that those services running are a significant drain and should be attended to by home users especially. joe average has little use for the many tentacles that run by default that are more suited to other (e.g. corporate) environments. indeed MS has finally released information on the services recently on their website and it's become quite popular: users armed with the decryption can judge which of them to turn off. um, i would expect notebook users to be more keenly concerned with precious system resources, not less, considering that power management and connectivity unfortunately are directly affected. that being said, strict number of processes running doesn't concern me as much as their basic usefulness on a round-the-clock basis, esp if larger amounts of physical RAM turn out to be available. i suspect though that many of us think 512MB is sufficient and that's not true IF system resources (and there are other ways to measure as well) are being siphoned. better to have the majority of your RAM available rather than a fraction of it.

#20 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 8:15 pm

I looked at my post, and I did look at all the measures. I do not see the services that are running on my system as a "significant drain". The services running in the background, including the IBM services, are transparent in daily operation. I am acutely aware of machine performance, and even recently upgraded the Banias in my T41 to a Dothan and saw enough benefit to make it worthwhile (especially when running VMware).

I am not suggesting that you run services you don't wish to. I am suggesting that the services you allude to are trouble-free and transparent if properly updated, set-up and tuned.
... JD Hurst

rocky01 · #21 Post by **rocky01** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 9:13 pm

and i thank you for taking time to reply.

for those however who question if their system effeciency might be improved, i encourage thorough review of unecessary services, including IBM specific ones, that may best be shut off or at least set to engage manually only upon demand. this is not a novel idea, it's practically required:

http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5103176.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/0,39023 ... 986,00.htm

i hope other weigh in the ones IBM preloads.

Windowx XP boot time down to 50 sec. not bad...

Windowx XP boot time down to 50 sec. not bad...

Re: Windowx XP boot time down to 50 sec. not bad...

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