Startup times...

The reason for this topic is in one post in which someone told that his AAO starts windows in 5 seconds... Ok this claim was ridiculus but it gave me the idea...

So i took a stopwatch and i've measured my AAO startup time from the press of the on switch to fully load windows...

My heavily optimized installation took 38.6 seconds to load... I dont think that it can get any faster...

What are your startup time??? Remember that it has to be from the moment you press the on switch to the moment windows has fully loaded...

I have an AAO with an 8 gb SSD, 8gb SD and 1.5 GB of RAM... Windows XP Pro SP2...

 

describe what you mean by "windows has fully loaded." does it mean when the start button shows up, wallpaper shows up, or when you're able to start an application like file explorer?

coincidentally i timed mine this morning and from power button to the start of file explorer (using shortcut key) was about 60 seconds. i think the biggest drag on my start time is loading up avg antivirus. 160gb hd, 1gb memory, xp pro sp3.

 

When you are able to start applications... At 38.6 i am able to run firefox...

Actually for antivirus i use avast because i think it is the lightest of the bunch... And one of the best with regular updates...

I think i will be able to trim some time if i disable wireless but this is cheating because i use wireless all the time...

 

38 seconds is pretty damn good for a netbook. it's probably faster than my desktop.

i forgot to add that i also have a logon screen, so that probably adds 5+ seconds to mine. i timed it again and it came out to 1 minute 18 seconds from power button to start of file explorer. i use file explorer because it's a native windows application.

i also load acronis backup utility, coretemp, two finger scroll and avg antivirus during startup. i'm willing to sacrifice a few seconds at startup for the increased functionality.

 

I will try my best to explain but forgive my english because it is not my native language.

I am using ubuntu for my main computer but on the AAO i found it to be slow so i switched to windows.

I used win xp pro full cd, not an nlited version. I formated using fat32. I installed all drivers from acer. I disabled system restore, swap file, windows update, indexing and any service that i dont need. In performance settings i adjusted for performance. I uninstalled any windows components that i dont need.

I moved my profile from the SSD to an 8 gb SD. To do this you have to create a temporary account with administrative rights, log on with this account, move your primary account to the ssd and then change the registry to point to the new directory.

ProfileImagePath registry value

The ProfileList registry key contains some sub-keys, which are nothing but the list of User Account Security Identifiers (SID). Each of the SID represents an Account. The key is located here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ ProfileList

Identify the SID for your User account, and change the Profile path

* To know the SID for your user account, you may use the script sidlist.vbs
* Download the script and run it. (The User Account names and SIDs will be listed in a log file, and opened automatically.)
* Note down the SID for your account.
* Then, in the Registry Editor, select the correct SID that belongs to your user account.
* In the right-pane, double-click the ProfileImagePath value and change the profile path. ( The ProfileImagePath stores the full path of the User account home folder. )

Example

%SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\OldUsername

becomes the following:

%SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\NewUsername

Close Registry Editor, and restart Windows. See if you're able to logon to that user profile successfully. Additionally, to verify if the path has been changed successfully, type SET in the Command Prompt. In case you find any abnormal behavior when running an application, you may undo the above procedure. If everything went ok you can delete the temporary account you created.

I installed all the applications i need (photoshop 7, office 2003, mozilla firefox, comic book reader, tightvnc, winamp, windows commander, avast antivirus, etc).

I created a permanent ram drive 256mb in size and i moved there the TEMP and TMP folders from windows (its in the enviroment variables settings) and firefox cache (type about:config on a firefox window).With this step you gain a huge performance boost when playing flash videos.

I applied EWF on the c: drive and put the startup and shutdown scripts.

I used ccleaner, i disabled any garbage that its left at startup and i cleaned the registry.

These are more or less the steps i took. Now the AAO is way faster than my desktop computer. Everything is loading at instant time.

Right now i am in a middle of a project to make windows a bit more eye candy. I am adding a dock for programs (as in osx) and desktop cube (as in beryl) for the time the performance hit is low (+ 5 secs on startup and small difference in launching programs). If it goes well i will post a tutorial here.

I hope I helped you a bit.