Vista: Whatever happened to fast boot?

**Vikingod** · Apr 12, 2007, 08:37 AM

Source: ZDNet
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Anyone else remember when Microsoft used to talk about making Windows Vista (or Longhorn, as it was then known) a fast-booting operating system. Fast, as in cold boots that were 50 percent faster than those possible with Windows XP?

Something obviously went awry.

As Computerworld is reporting, a number of Vista users are none too happy about Vista boot-up times. Some are questioning whether Microsoft is advocating that users just put Vista into sleep mode, as opposed to shutting down systems on a daily basis, to mask the sluggish boot up.

papillion · Apr 12, 2007, 10:10 AM

Hi,
Can only relative my own experience. Thinkpad-x31 boots in 30-45 seconds, versus 60-90 under Windows/xp. I did learn something by accident, my manufacturer (IBM) had many utilities which i seldom used, each added one or two processes to startup and running. So, in moving to Vista a finally did a 'clean install' (keep files but not program settings), and in the process freed up 15.0gig of disk space. I had been running xp on the machine for a very long time. hope this helps,

GutterPunk · Apr 12, 2007, 10:22 AM

My computer boots 3x as fast as my old xp machine... and definitely faster than my core 2 laptop at work.

dipstick · Apr 12, 2007, 10:43 AM

I wonder if they are testing it using Readyboost. It adds quite a bit of HD activity at startup and would definitely throw off times if they did(I'm sure 4GB sticks are even worse than my 2GB). But I will also have to agree that overall Vista is quite a bit faster at both start up and shutdown times.

Judas · Apr 12, 2007, 11:34 AM

It really is dependant on the system, some systems have a poor startup with vista while others are insanely fast.

Most of the slower machines seem to be Via chipset related....

Zelig · Apr 12, 2007, 12:07 PM

Sleep mode does seem handy, I'd be interested in seeing numbers of how it affects power consumption vs. simply turning a computer off.

My motherboard doesn't properly support the sleep mode though.

Judas · Apr 12, 2007, 12:52 PM

i prefer to do a full shutdown every night.... it's just not pratical to have anything running at all..

GutterPunk · Apr 12, 2007, 01:13 PM

mine runs 24/7 doing prime95 atm

Zelig · Apr 12, 2007, 01:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judas

i prefer to do a full shutdown every night.... it's just not pratical to have anything running at all..

A full shutdown still leaves some juice flowing, enough to keep BIOS information/date from being erased, and to light up a couple LEDs, some power to the keyboard, depending on your hardware, unless you turn off the PSU when you shutdown as well.

Sleep mode turns off optical/hard drives, fans, and the like, it keeps enough power going to the ram to keep information there. Like I said, I'd like to see numbers, I'd expect power consumption to be a few watts either way.

**Iria** · Apr 12, 2007, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

A full shutdown still leaves some juice flowing, enough to keep BIOS information/date from being erased, and to light up a couple LEDs, some power to the keyboard, depending on your hardware, unless you turn off the PSU when you shutdown as well.

Sleep mode turns off optical/hard drives, fans, and the like, it keeps enough power going to the ram to keep information there. Like I said, I'd like to see numbers, I'd expect power consumption to be a few watts either way.

There's always a power strip ... which is what I use if I really want something off ...

Judas · Apr 12, 2007, 04:58 PM

imo, that's way to far beyond shutting things down.

I've seen so many variants of "sleep mode" that i'm not sure which is what,

I've seen alot of sleep modes where the hardrives and optical drives shutdown and the keyboard mouse as well, but the CPU fans are at full tilt.

Hibernation isn't much different depending on the machine.

IF sleep mode was to basically shutdown but keep the ram fully loaded and charged, bootup should be pretty damn quick. I can't see there being any issue with this aside from possibly losing everything if the power were to go out (which can cause nasties)

***Zardon*** · Apr 12, 2007, 05:37 PM

and here we go again, another crap article ....... id love to know if any of these guys actually use the OS, or just make it up when they wake up in the morning.

vista boots on average 30-50% faster unless you have some serious crap installed......

GutterPunk · Apr 12, 2007, 05:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zardon

and here we go again, another crap article ....... id love to know if any of these guys actually use the OS, or just make it up when they wake up in the morning.

vista boots on average 30-50% faster unless you have some serious crap installed......

could ye be any more blunt? hah agree

Golbeze · Apr 12, 2007, 06:15 PM

I have to agree with others here about Vista shutting down faster than XP. In fact, Vista runs faster on my system than XP ever did, though startup seems to me around the same or a bit slower, but the rest of Vista just blazes for me. I'm really glad I upgraded to it.

fobis · Apr 12, 2007, 06:35 PM

I've seen and experienced Vista boot times. They're wicked fast on decent systems, much faster than Windows XP boot times.

Mazuko · Apr 12, 2007, 07:43 PM

I have to agree even in my dual boot xp pro/vista home premium system Vista just smokes XP Pro in load times even with all the optional programs I have loading at startup in both applications.

I just wish good creative audio drivers, ZDWlan (WIFI MAX for Wii), and Trillian worked in Vista than I would never have a reason to use XP again.

OmegaRED · Apr 12, 2007, 07:55 PM

I agree this is BS, Vista boots up much quicker than Xp on my machine, I even have Vista Ultimate on a much slower drive than my Xp install and it still takes less time.

Lowfat · Apr 12, 2007, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

A full shutdown still leaves some juice flowing, enough to keep BIOS information/date from being erased,.

that is what a CMOS battery is fore

I've had systems unplugged for years that still keep their date.

Comp_guy0 · Apr 12, 2007, 09:36 PM

When I installed Vista (for a very brief time) it started much faster than XP. Getting my Nvidia RAID controller to work was a whole nother story. XP just runs so great on my system I just saw no point in wasting my resouces with Vista (or as I have been calling it, ME II).