Tweaking boot time (classpnp.sys?)

[madtownidiot]

or there are too many processes running at startup.

Now wait! What's to say "too many"? And what's to say a lot is "bad"? Many folks have cameras, card readers, external drives, printers, email programs, PDA devices, various security programs including AV, AS, FW programs, HW monitors, special mouse and keyboard programs, dual monitors, networked/mapped drives, etc. that start at boot. I say again, as long as the system is running fine once it is fully booted, then a long (3 - 4 minutes) boot time does not indicate a "problem". Some XP systems can take 5 - 6 minutes to boot, then run great all day long.

There is no harm in having many processes run at startup as long as you have the resources (namely RAM) to support them after the boot is complete.

Most people I know get really annoyed and impatient when their system takes too long to boot, no matter how well it performs once it's running. Everything in the startup tab of MSconfig can be disabled without affecting functionality. What's wrong with not wanting programs to run until you click on them? I just built a desktop today that runs 2 HDDs in RAID 0 (see system specs) and still starts up in less than 40 seconds.. sounds like everyone else is just making excuses. I mean, really, who's going to print something, send a fax, copy some pictures from their camera, send an instant message, sync their ipod or PDA, run a virus scan, download a java update, and upgrade to limewire pro their all in the first 2 minutes after they start their computer? Most people I know want to get on the internet first thing after they turn their computer on. Disabling all startup items only stops gui apps from starting. It doesn't affect the drivers for a dual display setup, printers, special mice, keyboards or hardware based raid or any security software installed. Yahoo messenger will still work if you have to click on the icon to get it started. Your networked resources will still be there. Your AV is still working, even if nothing pops up 3 seconds after the desktop. telling you to run a scan
When I start my computer, I want to decide what applications to run, not have 15 or 20 different things pop up at once and then have to decide which things to shut down before I can do anything useful. I'm also not one of those people who leaves their computer on all day. When I'm not using it, I shut it off, no different than turning off a light or the television when I leave the room. Sometimes I'm in a hurry and just want to get a quick email out before I run off somewhere.. so yeah.. in my opinion, if a computer takes more than a minute to boot, it's too slow, no matter what it's got for hardware.

 

[flez]

my raid needs nothing

Not true! It is setup in the BIOS and is loaded every time it boots.

Loading the raid driver into windows takes less than a few seconds, all the works already been done.


And with only 2 drives mine takes less than 10-15 seconds extra to post, takes about 20 for it to recognise the 6 i currently have connected, in different modes, but the modes there are in make no difference to post times, its still 3-4 seconds per drive as it identifies each one.

This seems to be a flaw in that it allows spinup time for each drive on every boot, which is totally not needed, although i have seen that if there has been a bsod and the drives halt, then they do come back on one at a time, so for that, individual waits are needed.

I suppose it all depends on your raid chipset manufacturer, and how much software support it needs/uses as to how much longer it adds to true loading times, not post times.

 

[Digerati]

Yes, you have stated your point several times now.

Ummm, yes, but not because I wanted to repeat myself. It was you who were confused. And "twisting" might imply an intentional misrepresentation of what I was saying. I don't believe you were intentionally "twisting" my words around to change my message. That was a poor choice of words on my part. Sorry. I should have used "confused". I trust now you are not.

I am attempting to understand whether a raid set up add significant time to the booting of a Windows 7 OS? If so how much time... 10, 30, 60 seconds? Would you be willing to provide an answer?

That's hard to answer. As I mentioned earlier, much of the setup for RAID is done in the BIOS, before the hard drive (and Windows drivers) are even touched. And as flez reiterated, it depends on the RAID chipset used by the motherboard maker, where most of the setup work is done. It also depends on the motherboard's clock speeds and CPU. I can see it adding 30 seconds, but 60 seems a bit long. And note too that some RAIDs are setup in software, and some RAID controllers are true hardware devices. Windows 7's own RAID controller is software based.

Most people I know get really annoyed and impatient when their system takes too long to boot

No doubt. But I've been using personal computers since before IBM introduced the "Personal Computer" and the normal practice has always been you turn it on first thing in the morning, then go get your cup of coffee, donut or whatever, then come back and get to work. That assumes you even turned it off the night before and don't leave it on 24/7, as many did and still do.

Even if you have nothing extra loading at boot, today's motherboards are MUCH MORE than one piece of hardware. And each of these devices are much more sophisticated too. Integrated devices included with today's motherboards include:

• Chipset - which includes the BIOS itself, plus the CMOS information, plus more
• PATA controller (phasing out but still here)
• SATA controller
• Floppy controller (phasing out, but most boards still have floppy conntrollers)
• USB controller (necessary today for keyboards and mice support) often multiple controllers for 6, 8, or even 10 ports)
• IEEE1394 (Firewire)
• Memory Card Reader
• Network Interface 10/100
• Network Interface 10/100/1000
• Memory Controller (Dual or Triple Channel)
• PCI Bus Controller
• PCIe Bus Controller
• Sound
• Hardware Monitor (to read fan speeds and temps in BIOS)
  
  
• If on-board graphics, that must be loaded, if graphics card, the graphics BIOS must be loaded.

That's just to get started, and BEFORE touching the hard drive for drivers; I am sure I have missed some. Then, for a "normal boot" you need to start, at a minimum, your graphics drivers. If you are connected to a network with Internet access, you also must load a firewall, and anti-malware solution, and of course, an operating system.

Windows 7 has made it better because it makes your computer available for use much earlier than previous versions (even though it is still loading stuff in the back ground). And certainly, if a Windows 7 machine was taking 4 minutes, I would be looking for a bad driver or some other problem. But taking less than 2 minutes to fully boot from a cold start should not be considered "bad".

Once again, if your computer is running fine once it is fully booted, don't worry so much about boot times. Sure, you can trim down what loads at boot, but think about what that means. It means later in the day when you click on something that needs it, you have to wait. Then when you click on something else that needs something else you trimmed, you have to wait again. To me, if I have to wait in the middle of the day, that's annoying.

I would suggest if boot times are that important to you, and if using Windows 7, use Windows 7's "Hybrid Sleep" mode. My machine is ready to go in about 15 seconds, and that includes me fumbling around with my password.

 

[madtownidiot]

The raid setup on the system in my specs, adds about 10-15 seconds to post time, but cuts the time it takes to boot windows after POST by more than 20 seconds. The point of spending money on RAID 0, quad or six core processors, huge amounts of memory and dual graphics cards is to make your system faster right? Windows doesn't even have to load any drivers for the RAID array. Those were installed before the OS, which sees my two HDDs as a single 3TB HDD divided into 3 partitions. All that extra performance would be wasted if I added another 400-800 MB of applications, gadgets to the overall system load. Where's the progress if it still takes just as long, if not longer, to get on the internet or play your favorite game when you get home from work as it did back in the days of windows 2000 and XP SP1? When you increase the system load in greater proportion than it's capabilities, you're not making it faster, you're making it slower

 

[Digerati]

Windows doesn't even have to load any drivers for the RAID array.

That's not true. Drivers must still be loaded, just as they are for SATA, IDE or whatever. They may be natively supported in later versions of Windows, thus automatically loaded, but they still must be loaded.

 

[pparks1]

@Digerati: I think what madtownidiot is saying is that there are no special drivers that are getting loaded from within Windows to support his RAID configuration which are noticeably slowing down boot times. His RAID system initializes at boot time and as far as Windows is concerned, it's just a single hard drive that it's running from.

@madtownidiot: I get what you are saying about performance. Although, I don't think everybody agrees with the process of tweaking everything to make it even faster @boot, etc. Some people are perfectly happy and content with a slightly slower bootup, but with software and such preloaded and ready to go at a later time. It doesn't mean they are wrong, or incompetent....just different than you. Perhaps they use fancy graphics cards to play games at high resolution and use RAID0 configurations for working with and editing huge video files.

 

[Digerati]

@Digerati: I think what madtownidiot is saying is that there are no special drivers that are getting loaded from within Windows to support his RAID configuration which are noticeably slowing down boot times.

The special drivers part would be easy to tell - look in device manager and if you see Promise or some other brand RAID controller besides Microsoft, drivers were loaded. Now if they are the cause of slow boot times, I don't know. Over the years I have looked for a program that measures the load time for each program loaded at boot, but as far as I know, there is no such beast.

 

[madtownidiot]

I guess I go with a minimalist approach when setting up a system, making it as quick and light as possible, because the end user probably isn't going to know half of what I know about how to clean and speed it up again when it eventually gets bogged down with new processes, poorly written or badly uninstalled software... And even a system with SSDs in raid 0 will probably slow down as windows 7 grows. XP started out with a minimum req of 64 MB ram, 1.5GB HDD space, and a 233Mhz CPU and ran very well with the recommended hardware or better, but even a bare bones XP SP3 is dog slow on a system with those specs now.. (yes I still have a working PIII box now running xubuntu that makes a pretty good media server for my home network)

I should clarify that I'm talking about when a computer has a newly installed OS, it shouldn't take more than a minute to boot. Believe me when I tell you, that's what people want. I've sold more computers on that point than anything else, mainly laptops to business professionals and college students who've previously owned a factory configured vista or xp machine that took something like 3 minutes to boot and 6 to shut down and are impressed when I show them a slightly newer machine running windows 7 and running snappier than anything you'll find at a big box store.

Instead of having everything run at startup, I advise people to pin the apps they use most often to the taskbar, which then loads them into superfetch after the 1st run. Even games like Crysis 2 start with almost no delay, especially because there aren't 115 other processes already loaded into memory... (or worse... paged but still active).

edit... @digerati, I'm using WD RE4 drives, (the RE stands for RAID Edition) which are configured at the hardware level for RAID 0 and need no additional drivers in windows. R/W speeds are averaging 250 MB/s read and 190 MB/s write

 

[pparks1]

I should clarify that I'm talking about when a computer has a newly installed OS, it shouldn't take more than a minute to boot. Believe me when I tell you, that's what people want. I've sold more computers on that point than anything else, mainly laptops to business professionals and college students who've previously owned a factory configured vista or xp machine that took something like 3 minutes to boot and 6 to shut down and are impressed when I show them a slightly newer machine running windows 7 and running snappier than anything you'll find at a big box store.

In my experience, the slow booting and performance issues almost always start AFTER the end-user spends some time installing a bunch of garbage. Even the factory configured machines are denoted as snappy and fast when brand new...but given time....with all of the crap that people install without giving it a second thought and their new computer slows to a crawl.

My work computer running Windows 7 since Jan 4, 2010 and it's pretty much just as fast 8 months later then it was at the start. Of course, I've only loaded what I needed to do my job. That makes a big difference.

 

[Laker]

Digerati - Confused no, uniformed and curious... YES!

Raid may add an extra 10-30 seconds for the system to boot according to you and others here. Thank you for your answer & apology.

It seems some may not be concerned with boot times due to their regular daily routine. Yet biding time by getting a cup of coffee while your system boots doesn't mesh with most people's expectation of today's technology. Wouldn't you rather have your system boot up in less than 20 seconds? I know I would and think others do too. Why else would 'Instant On' be so thoroughly sought after. 'Hybrid Sleep' being a by product of this search.

Is it an indication of your systems performance? Here we disagree. No, it's not a CrystalDiskMark benchmark. In truth though, it is part of the real world performance. Just consider what is required during a windows install, program or driver troubleshoot - multiple reboots. 20 seconds or less definitely better than 60, 120 or even 240 seconds which is then multiplied during these situations. As madtownidiot mentioned this extended and unneeded time frustrates most people.

Some experts believe that your boot time can be an indicator of your system's health. I'll refer those interested to this thread over at NotebookReview.com. See page 33, post #2: Post your Windows 7 Boot Time (tweaks allowed). By the way this boot time tweaking is good fun and very educational. The person quoted (Les) is an SSD/HDD reviewer. He claims to have been the first to review an SSD on the internet over at NBR. Check him & his articles out if you like: The SSD Review

I'm a firm believer in 'Less is More'. Although this doesn't apply to all circumstances, here it fits. Less applications loading at start up & therefore less time time to boot = more time to use the machine. Programs are loaded as needed just not at start up.

Some may disagree as their computer is used for different purposes or prefer it be run a certain way. Great! That is the fun in optimizing your system to your personal tastes. Let's acknowledge though that most would prefer faster rather than slower & appreciate help to get there.

 

[madtownidiot]

In my experience, the slow booting and performance issues almost always start AFTER the end-user spends some time installing a bunch of garbage. Even the factory configured machines are denoted as snappy and fast when brand new...but given time....with all of the crap that people install without giving it a second thought and their new computer slows to a crawl.

I agree completely, and that's exactly the reason I like to sell computers with a minimal set of installed programs and a streamlined startup configuration. Some computers start slow from the beginning, mainly as a result of a hangup in loading a less than optimal hardware driver or outdated bios running new hardware.. some business machines can take a long time to post because of a TPM or security chip, and there really isn't much that can be done about it except to disable it in bios if it isn't necessary, but my primary focus is on streamlining everything else as much as possible

and how much of your next years income would you be willing to place on future service packs and windows updates not adding significantly to the initial system load at startup, even if you didn't install any other programs or hardware?

 

[pparks1]

I agree completely, and that's exactly the reason I like to sell computers with a minimal set of installed programs and a streamlined startup configuration.

But even if you streamline it 100%, the minute the end-user gets it and starts downloading and installing a bunch of garbage, it just slows down anyway. So, not sure much is really being accomplished.

and how much of your next years income would you be willing to place on future service packs and windows updates not adding significantly to the initial system load at startup, even if you didn't install any other programs or hardware?

I'd be willing to bet that if no applications were installed and no spyware/malware was introduced onto the machine, that future windows updates and service packs might impact performance slightly...but it wouldn't significantly alter performance.

 

[Digerati]

Believe me when I tell you, that's what people want.

Nobody's denying, or arguing that people don't want to sit around waiting for Windows to load.

mainly laptops

Not really a fair comparison. Notebooks for years have successfully used hibernation mode - while PCs (until Windows 7) have been problematic. And it is certainly not a fair comparison (or marketing strategy) to compare startup and shutdown times of Win7 to earlier versions. That is an inherent feature(?) or characteristic of Windows 7. That is a selling point for Windows 7, but again, not an indication of "performance".

Instead of having everything run at startup, I advise people to pin the apps they use most often to the taskbar, which then loads them into superfetch after the 1st run.

And that is a good strategy, no doubt - especially if (1) they don't use the program all the time, or (2) they have limited resources. But as I noted on page 2,

Many folks have cameras, card readers, external drives, printers, email programs, PDA devices, various security programs including AV, AS, FW programs, HW monitors, special mouse and keyboard programs, dual monitors, networked/mapped drives, etc. that start at boot.

Those all affect boot times.

I have to correct myself from something I said earlier. I said it takes about 15 seconds to bring my system out of hybrid sleep mode - I was wrong. I counted this time, and it took less than 8 seconds.

edit... @digerati, I'm using WD RE4 drives, (the RE stands for RAID Edition) which are configured at the hardware level for RAID 0 and need no additional drivers in windows. R/W speeds are averaging 250 MB/s read and 190 MB/s write

Are you telling us that when you look in Device Manager, you don't see a RAID controller? Because I am familiar with WD RE drives and from my understanding, and confirmed by my reading of this, there is no "intelligence" in the drives that allows them to set themselves up in a RAID configuration when two or more of those drives are installed in a system. These drives are simply designed, and marketed for RAID applications - like any "server-class" drive. The only RAID feature they have, unless I'm missing something, is they provide RAID error reporting, but that's it. Otherwise, I am sure that would be prominently listed here. If I'm wrong, can you provide a link?

Digerati - Confused no, uniformed and curious... YES!

Hey! Nothing wrong with that! With IT being a monstrous industry consisting of many industries, the bonus for me coming here and sharing what I know is the exposure to so many experienced users from areas within IT I didn't even know exists! Learning something new along the way is always a good thing. Plus, I hate to be wrong and I am more often than I like - so minimizing that potential forces me to verify, and corroborate with links before I put my foot in my mouth.

In my experience, the slow booting and performance issues almost always start AFTER the end-user spends some time installing a bunch of garbage. Even the factory configured machines are denoted as snappy and fast when brand new...but given time....with all of the crap that people install without giving it a second thought and their new computer slows to a crawl.

I agree - sort of. There are many great programs out there that some folks feel should be on every computer. CCleaner may be one of them - it is certainly on all of mine. But the problem is, the folks at Piriform need to pay their bills too, so they attempt to foist the Yahoo toolbar on your system if you just haphazardly go along with the default install. Other programs try to put ASK, or a download manager or who knows what. Before long, you may have a 1/2 dozen or more toolbars, download managers, automatic update checkers and all kinds of other stuff.

So the problem is not so much what they install, but how they install it. Folks should ALWAYS use the custom install option and PAY ATTENTION to each and every prompt, check box, and option and make sure only the program you want is being installed. And that is not just for free or shareware programs either. You should use the custom install for ALL program installs.

 

[madtownidiot]

XP sp3 adds at least 200-250 MB to the memory/page load over the initial version of xp, which is pretty significant.... then there's the incredible bloat that comes with each new version of office and IE.. what's it going to take to run IE 9 or office 15 when it arrives? Can't do anything about that.. and you can't tell people not to install a bunch of garbage either, cause they just don't listen... it's a given that an operating system and it's programs will expand to fill all available resources (and then some), but I still think it's a good idea to provide the best possible starting point

@ digerati... yes there is a raid controller in dev manager, but it works perfectly without my having to install any further applications and the extra drivers that come with them. Same with my graphics controller. I installed the drivers but not the ati control panel that came with it.

.... and amen about the damn toolbars that come with almost everything you download, unfortunately most users aren't savvy enough to know that..

ccleaner is a great app, but not quite thorough enough, because windows won't allow ccleaner to alter protected system files. I manually clear everything ccleaner does and then some by booting linux from a flash drive. for example, system volume information is not a necessary folder in anything besides the OS and program partition... and getting rid of it on the 1.5 TB media partition that holds my (1340GB) music and movie collection can free up as much as 30 GB without causing any problems.

 

[Digerati]

@ digerati... yes there is a raid controller in dev manager, but it works perfectly without my having to install any further applications and the extra drivers that come with them

Okay - now we are on the same page. But please understand, while you may not have installed any WD applications (or special drivers by pressing F6 during the install, as we had to with XP), Windows 7 sees that RAID during the boot process (when loading in the CMOS information), then loads the applicable controller drivers. They may be native drivers, but they are still being loaded. You probably have a service or two running too. Actually, since native, they surely load much quicker so that's a good thing - and just another reason why Windows 7 is the best Windows yet.

 

[pparks1]

I agree - sort of. There are many great programs out there that some folks feel should be on every computer. CCleaner may be one of them - it is certainly on all of mine.

Ha, we already have a disagreement. Not that I have anything fundamentally wrong with Piriform....but my experience with CCleaner has been hit or miss in terms of resolving significant issues. Therefore, I usually don't use it or install it....and my general recommendation to average folks is to not use it as it could cause them more problems than it solves.

So the problem is not so much what they install, but how they install it. Folks should ALWAYS use the custom install option and PAY ATTENTION to each and every prompt, check box, and option and make sure only the program you want is being installed. And that is not just for free or shareware programs either. You should use the custom install for ALL program installs.

I do agree with this. As we know, even the good free stuff comes with added baggage you might not want. And the bad free stuff...almost always comes with tons you don't want. Unfortunately, many people are unable to differentiate between the good free stuff and the bad free stuff.

 

[madtownidiot]

... just another reason why Windows 7 is the best Windows yet.

definitely couldn't agree more. Setting up raid in bios took about 4 minutes, allocating and formatting the HDD partitions took about 10 minutes using gparted from a ubuntu live flash drive, and win 7 installed in 25 minutes from a 32 GB SSD. Total time to set up after I assembled everything (can't really call it building) was maybe 2 hours, which is faster than with any previous OS I've used in the past 10 years, including ubuntu, which usually requires about 500-800 MB of downloads and updates after the initial installation just to get most of the capabilities win7 has already built in.

 

[Digerati]

Concerning CCleaner, I assume you are referring to the registry cleaner portion. I like it simply because it is not very aggressive, as opposed to others that find 900 "problems". But it is the crud cleaning I like it for - though I generally recommend Windows own Disk Cleanup in the same breath - in part because it will clean out old restore points too, but also because it is already there.

 

[Echo147]

Blinkin' heck, what have I started

Regarding RAID, it most certainly does load drivers despite appearing as a single "hard drive" to Windows. I've used arrays for the OS for about 5 years, and when ghosting to a new one but forgetting to put drivers in place, you'll most definitely get the dreaded 0x0000007b inaccessible boot device STOP error. Trick is to pop the new card in before swapping the old one out, boot normally, point it to the necessary drivers, then make a fresh ghost for migration.

Out of interest, I dusted off a ps2 keyboard from the shelf, killed off all SATA burners and USB ports in BIOS, and shaved about 20 seconds off - course that's a pretty crippled system so they got re-enabled pretty quick.

Hybrid sleep is a good suggestion, sadly this Razer mouse loses my bind preferences when it resumes, other than vanilla left/right.

Think I just have to accept that many of the dead quick times from that thread must be systems with the minimum of hardware connected and virtually nothing in startup.

 

[madtownidiot]

Blinkin' heck, what have I started
Think I just have to accept that many of the dead quick times from that thread must be systems with the minimum of hardware connected and virtually nothing in startup.

exactly right... and why I disagree with some who say startup time is no indication of performance.. to the contrary, if you ignore the time it takes for POST and eliminate as many software and hardware variables as possible, you end up with what I consider a reasonably accurate benchmark.