New
#1
Windows 7 Ultimate Boot
Hi,
I find my boot into Windows 7 Ultimate (SP1) Alienware laptop is quite slow. Granted I don't have an SSD, my hard drive is a single 750 gig 7,200 drive but it still alarms me. From cold boot to login screen is quite quick (25 secs) but when I login the 'welcome' screen lingers from between 20 and 35 secs. Once the desktop finally shows everything then proceeds to load pretty quick and become usable & the laptop is blazing quick. It's not as if it's hanging at the welcome screen due to no activity or timing out because I can see that there is hard disk activity.
If I wait a while before logging in (say about 25 secs) then the welcome screen passes much quicker. Checking the event log tends to give an overall boot time average of 120 seconds. I know all about the various quirks, such as the solid colour background bug (which doesn't apply as I use my own jpeg) & have downloaded a couple of hotfixes associated with boot time improvement. However nothing makes a difference. I tried a cold boot disabling all start up programs and all non microsoft services and it was no different. However, Safe mode does boot in much quicker.
I have even tried Soluto (which is a good way of trimming start up programs). What is clear to me from this is 3rd party programs are not the problem. I think it's the Microsoft services slowing things down. There are about 50-60 of them running at start up & they take up probably 90% of the boot time. Now I know it's fine to try and disable 3rd party stuff but disabling MS services seems like a bad idea especially as I use a home network (I have no domains) set up. It's unclear what services are critical or not. Is it the nature of Windows 7 Ultimate to be a bit of a slow booter? As far as I know my laptop has always been this way from the minute I received it from Alienware. I'm sure people with netbooks have a faster boot than me! Although they do prob run 7 home rather than 7 ultimate. My wife's laptop running 7 home is similar slow & this is a dell laptop. Seeing as Dell & Alienware are one and the same maybe it is down to their design and the included stock HDD is a bit sub par.
I thought Windows 7 should be a bit faster at boot. My Vista Home Premium laptop doesn't have the Welcome screen delay. Although looking at the event log it clocks a similar overall boot time of about 120 secs. Do I have an issue with my machine?
Many thanks,
Wayne