Vista Tweaks!

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by yellowhello

Well, that may be because your machine is a quad core, and Vista was probably not programmed to take advantage of all four cores, until you told it specifically too. I'm betting your friend's machine wasn't a quad-core...

Paul computer is also a quad core.

Either way.... you're asian Tyreal. Do your kung-fu thing and dodge those rocks we're throwing at you.

[Tyreal]

I think Vista checks at every boot up how many processors are in the system. This tweak probably sets it in advance so that it doesn't need to check. If you really want me to time it on my own personal system then I will.

EDIT: Timed it: Before tweak: 41 seconds.
After tweak: 37 seconds.

I don't know if it's actually the tweak working or if it's something else. It was timed right from the POST menu to the desktop.

[One4yu2c]

No one's against you Tyreal, not because of this thread anyway. But on a serious note, when it comes to the User Guides/Reviews forum (and all forums, really), we want to be sure any advice/tweaks/hacks we're passing on are accurate and repeatable. I've read claims on Google that the processor tweak yielded a faster boot time, with one of them (Chris Pirillo) stating that "I truly did notice a marked difference in how much faster my machine booted!," while also saying that he didn't benchmark the difference, and admitted it could just be a placebo effect. That prompted me to bench it myself, which as I already reported, yielded no difference whatsoever. Hence, the request for hard numbers rather than speculative claims.

I also received a PM from someone who wishes to remain anonymous that:

"Vista may asked to be re-activated because you set it to 4 cores and triggered an EULA alert (documented - but not a consistent behavior). If the UAC is on, it can actually slow boot time (I saw the flowchart...never any real results)"

I haven't researched this myself, but the possible quirk is worth a mention.

[Tyreal]

Thats ok. I understand that we don't want bad or invalid tweaks floating around here. It's totally open for dissection and if you guys want to tear it apart be my guest. I'd like to see how it much or how little it benefits other users out there.

Just to let you know, I have UAC off.

[OCNoob]

Holy crap, 42 seconds to boot Vista? Wow, everyone's laptops here on campus boot Vista in about 2 minutes! And these were the 17" desktop replacements with ample specs..

[Elysium]

I might try this on my Mom's Toshiba laptop running Vista. Hopefully I don't screw it up...

[One4yu2c]

Originally Posted by OCNoob

Holy crap, 42 seconds to boot Vista? Wow, everyone's laptops here on campus boot Vista in about 2 minutes! And these were the 17" desktop replacements with ample specs..

That also included the fraction of a second it took me to hit return during POST in the dual boot menu (XP is also installed on this rig).

[Quakindude]

You can't even begin to compare a school laptop to people's personal rigs at home. If it's a school issued laptop, the ancillary programs institutions run for administration can tremendously affect boot times. In the Army, if you take a Dell laptop issued to you and then have the exact same laptop with a personal XP install and compare the boot times, the Army one boots in about 3 minutes whereas a personal laptop, even with a lot of bloat, boots in half that.

My desktop, with WinXP Pro and Vista, boot very differently. The Vista boot up time is about 2/3 that of the XP Pro. Of course, my Vista install isn't quite as bloated as my XP install atm.

[OCNoob]

No, these laptops are student-owned. My XP Pro laptop (Dell) boots very quickly compared to any Vista lappy that my friends have. They said their laptops were fairly new at the time, too. Still had bloatware, I presume, and I had all the crap removed once I received mine. This laptop boots into XP in about a minute or so.

[halutzparilla]

i just tried this and used a timer watch and this is my result:
using my wife's DV6565US laptop...:

before all tweaks: 1min 46sec boot time
after all tweaks: 1min 15 secs boot time....

i just followed the UAC disable, this tweak and another linked thread of tweaks from one of our thread that i can no longer find... i thinks if i remember this correctly its approximately 6-7 tweaks i did, including PCdecrapcifier thing, and unstalling most of the uneeded and garbage trial software that came with laptop preinstalled... but still above 1minute boot time...