Speed Up Your Computer's Startup Time

[landbeforetimelover]

I am surprised by how many people have unneeded fonts on their computer.  It really slows it down at startup.  The font like symbol, most people will never use.  All you really need are like 20 fonts.  If ya have a lot of them, it slows down your computer at startup cuz it has to determine which fonts to load.  Give it little options and you'll see great speed improvements.  A guy just brought me his computer cuz it was so slow.  It was almost brand new and it took nearly 15 minutes to start up.  He had several thousand fonts on his computer.  I removed all but 36 of them and it solved all of his problems.

Another way to speed up your computer is to reduce the amout of colors to 16 bit.  Honestly, most people don't need more than that.

Increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file will help with computers that don't have a lot of ram.  Don't set it to some insane amount like 4096mb.  Your computer can only use so much.

Remove your background entirely.  This will really help you.  I would never do this though cuz I like my LBT background.

Get a registry optimization program.  They arn't that expensive and they'll do ya a lot of good.

Remove startup programs.  If there's something you don't want to start at startup, just go to the start menu and go to all programs and then go to startup.  If there's a program in there that you don't need at startup, just delete the item from the menu.  If the program you want to remove from startup isn't in the startup menu, just launch the program and go into the properties.  It will most likely have an option to start at startup or not.  This will REALLY help with startup speed.

for gods sake, don't have your computer try to start with the cd drive before the hard drive unless you're about to install an operating system.  Just go into the BIOS setup menu and change the boot priority.  This will shave as much as 45 seconds off startup time.

Same goes with other devices including floopy drives, slave hard drives and other removable media.  Always set the master hard drive as the first boot device in the BIOS.

Reduce the amount of icons on the desktop.  If necessary, just create a folder on the desktop called "desktop" and put everything that's currently on your desktop  in it.

Remove the startup sound.  It takes some time to load sometimes and is hard on your computer.

Using all of the methods above, I was able to make a computer that normally started up in 5 minutes to start up in 19.7 seconds.  No hardware upgrades were required.  

You must face the inevitable though.  Sometimes, ya just need a hardware upgrade and there's nothing ya can do about it.

Does anyone else know other ways to speed up a computers startup time besides the methods I mentioned?  I have just learned this by trial and error.

[action9000]

Does anyone else know other ways to speed up a computers startup time besides the methods I mentioned? I have just learned this by trial and error.

Relating to your deleting startup programs:

msconfig is your friend. B)
Click the start button --> Run...
type msconfig and click run.
A window should pop up, with various tabs.  Click the startup tab.  This lists many of the applications that start when your computer is booting up.  Deselect as many of these as you can get away with.  It will free up RAM and improve your boot-up time.  

Be sure you know at least roughly what the program is before you deslect it, especially if you're on a laptop.  Many of the laptop's core drivers appear on here, such as the touchpad, media buttons, etc.  If you deselect those, you'll quickly be wondering why suddenly your touchpad won't scroll anymore.

Using all of the methods above, I was able to make a computer that normally started up in 5 minutes to start up in 19.7 seconds. No hardware upgrades were required.

I have Never had a computer boot in even Close to 19.7 seconds.  I don't know how you pulled that off.  The computer must have been basically empty.
Unless you installed Windows 3.1 onto a brand-new system; then maybe it would boot up pretty dang fast. :

[landbeforetimelover]

LOL.  I didn't want to tell anyone about msconfig here.  It can REALLY screw ya up if ya don't do it right.  Don't wanna be blamed when the stupid thing doesn't do anything but display error messages.

[action9000]

That is true.  If you don't touch anything but the Startup tab, you probably won't break anything.  You only start breaking stuff really when you edit boot.ini and things like that.

I modified boot.ini to allow access to 3 GB of RAM for applications instead of the detault 2 GB but most people have no use at all for that, and it does make some features on the computer a bit unstable.

[landbeforetimelover]

I don't know how you pulled that off. The computer must have been basically empty.

It had xp pro and I removed the spash screen.  It was empty except for the os.  

[landbeforetimelover]

removing the spash screen is the stupid thing that always says "windows xp" with the status indicator.  Ya really don't need it.  It's just microsoft's way of saying "this is my product".

[action9000]

Most of my boot time is after the splash screen, when I can see my desktop.  I spend a good 1 minute there before any apps respond well at all.  I wonder if this is fixable without formatting my computer.  I'm too lazy to do that anytime soon.

As for fonts, I have 334.  Probably too many...

[DarkHououmon]

I have, multiple times, closed some programs in Startup to prevent them from loading up the next time. But they keep on returning. Windows constantly reselects them and loads them up. There have been multiple times when *everything* in Startup is selected.

[landbeforetimelover]

As for fonts, I have 334. Probably too many...

LOL.  I'd say so.  Remove similar ones.  There are some that only have a minuscule differnece.

[action9000]

I'll keep my fonts to a minimum on my workstation computer when I get it.  For now, there are times when random fonts such as the symbols are useful.  I don't want to remove too many.
I can be a bit of a packrat sometimes, especially when it comes to computers

[landbeforetimelover]

I don't want to remove too many.

Trust me my friend, removing them would be a good idea.  Just back them up to a flash drive and use it when ya need it.  I think you'll be surprised at how infrequently you actually use it.

[DarkHououmon]

LOL! I just checked how many fonts are on my computer, and it says I have 522. XD I don't know where they all came from. I don't download fonts.

[landbeforetimelover]

I can be a bit of a packrat sometimes, especially when it comes to computers

LOL.  Me too.  I have used about 30,000 GB already.

[landbeforetimelover]

I don't know where they all came from. I don't download fonts.

when you install a printer, it puts a bigillion of them on there.  Remove them.  Ya don't need them.

[DarkHououmon]

My brother also installs some fonts, so some of them are probably his.

I don't really want to remove any of them because my family, particularly my sisters, like using different kinds of fonts, and I don't know which ones they like and which ones they don't.

And it would take too long have them point out all the ones they use.

[landbeforetimelover]

Currently on my master computer (this one), I have 87 fonts.  Looks like I better clean it out again.

[action9000]

I just removed a bunch of fonts.  I cut it down to 79.  I'm not sure I can cut much more than that.

[landbeforetimelover]

if ya still need some of those fonts, there may be some that you'll never need to bold or italisize.  You can just delete those elements.

[landbeforetimelover]

Removing fonts in windows 98 is VERY dangerous.  It doesn't have all of the safegaurds that xp has.  Did you get any "cannot delete" messages?

[action9000]

Did you get any "cannot delete" messages?

Just one.

Yeah, I removed most of the Italic and Bold fonts; if I ever need them, I'll just use the italic or bold features of a word processor.