Yes ii does (once you tell it to) but just a note, it only does a normal defrag... for Optimization feature, you need to be in Windows.
Is there any advantage in disabling services set to manual, that haven't been started up? Most of the disabled list was in this category for me, I'm tempted to play it safe and leave them at manual but if it will shave off a few seconds I'd probably try disabling them.
I did not do any scientific test to know for sure. I don't think it does... but if you think it does.. well you have my "recommendation", and you have that my system didn't fall apart from doing so. When I have more free time, I'll definitely look into it. I know in XP it did a difference, since Vista I did not see anything... But I don't know if disabling alll this service sum up to a half a second or 1 second shave off. On my desktop, it did not. On my laptop I have a feeling it did, but it could be that I fell into a placebo effect.. I did not calculate timings for everything I disable one by one.... would be cool if I had such time.. but I don't. Maybe when I finish University and working (not any time soon).
Thanks goodbytes, this has definatley helped. Although even with an SSD my boot time is approx 54 secs from button being switched on and windows desktop appearing. I think this is something to do with my hardware more than anything though. It takes 28 secs from switching my power button on, until the monitor wakes up/switches on and shows BIOS splash screen. From there its only 25 secs to fully booted. x58 so i assume my add in card adds some time to the process.
I think I'll leave them on manual for now, at least on my main pc, the ssd means it boosts as fast as I need it to. I may try it out on my netbook though, that could benefit from any boost I can give it. If I get a chance I'll try timing manual vs. disabled services, although I'd imagine it will only result in a couple of seconds off if anything, it'll be hard to time it accurately. Great guide by the way, definitely worth a sticky.
I know I could get crusified for this but, should I take up hibernating instead of shutting down to increase boot time?
Of course! You can even sleep your computer for instant turn on (heck you can even tell Windows to not lock down your computer when you are setting your system to sleep, so that when you wake it up, there is no log-in screen, you are straight on your desktop). I sleep my desktop computer, for instant turn on when I need it.
I agree cause in Hibernation windows makes an image and shutsdown and instead of booting everything again it just boots the image. I think power issues would only arrise in sleep as this keeps the memory turned on and as we all know, when memory looses power it flashes it therefore loosing the image on the memory.
Also, if your PC is taking an unreasonably long time to boot it is worth your while to check the event viewer and see if there are any errors listed. Another handy utility built into Windows7 is the reliability monitor, which tracks how well your PC is behaving (just type reliability monitor into the start search bar). A very handy little thing to look at in the event viewer is detailed here - it gives you boot timings and tells you if anything is taking an unreasonable amount of time to initiliase. I recently had a 30 second pause on bootup - it got to the point just before the welcome/login screen should pop up (this is very noticeable with an ssd) and after a lot of searching I found an answer - I kept getting ntfs errors in the event log and read loads of stuff which sort of related to the problem but nothing worked until I chanced across the following post here. After following those instructions, no more pause. To put it lightly, I was elated so i thought I'd share this info as it's the first time I've ever come across this sort of error and it may help others scratching their heads. The weird thing is that the error happened even after a fresh install on a different drive. This was with all hdd's attached. Even unplugging my newest drive (the one that was registering the ntfs errors) wasn't stopping the pause from happening. It wasn't until I applied the fix above that it was solved. Plugging the suspected faulty hdd back in I feared the worst, but no, it's fine and there's no further ntfs errors in the event log. I used Crystal Disk Utility on the drive and it did have 1 sector er.. remap or something (can't remember sorry) which I reset back to 0 so I guess that was probably the cause of it all. I had copied about 1.3TB to it already without issue and no smart errors showed up while posting. I was suspecting a virus or rootkit had somehow got on, despite how careful I am. Just goes to show.
was it only on vista that it threw it wobbly from time to time with hibernation, i can't remember now, but we had a spate of pre builts throwing a wobbly when using hibernation.
If it does, that mean hibernation process failed. Windows 7 has a diagnostic tool. Open command prompt as true admin, go to the root of the C:\ drive (as a file will be created on the command I'll say, so it would be easy to access it) And run: powercfg -energy Once done, you'll get a report web page generated. Usually it's a driver issue or system BIOS not updated for the new Windows (if there was changes done.. Vista had a lot of changes compared to XP, so updating the BIOS is highly recommended - a common problem (off topic here) on laptops with old BIOS's, and/or with lack of official drivers, made the system do strange issues, like if you close the lid while the system was shutting down or hibernating, it made the computer go to sleep during that process. So when you wake it up.. well it continue that shutdown or hibernation process or created a problem.
Thank you GoodBytes! Shaved off about 50 second down to 32s startup now on my main rig. Yes I had to google some of the bios configs to deactivate ports and controllers and whatnot but it was still your guide that brought it all together. +rep!
Perhaps if it wouldn't be too much bother goodbytes, could you perhaps create a similar terrific guide for Vista as my dad is still unfortunately on it and his computer takes minutes to boot!
Hi Goodbytes Can you tell me how to do this as I would rather be up and runnign and not at login screen cheers
Very simple. Start > type in: password on wake up > select: Require a password when computer wakes This will jump you exactly where you need to be in the power options (I like Win7). Now, simply click on the link Change settings that are currently unavailable on the panel that appeared, and finally, click on the radio box Don't require a password, click you Save Changes button, and your done!
