Speeding up XP bootup

Our network consists of ibm x41 desktops w/ 256mb ram. The boot up time especially on a cold boot takes as long as 10 minutes from power up to desktop completely loaded. Are there any good methods of speeding up this time to an enterprise network. I know of the prefetch cache method, but looking for a more permanent fix.

thanks in advance

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sprkymrk

Do you have any idea of what the bottle neck is? Is it computer hardware? Lots of software loading at startup? Poorly configured group policies or maybe slow network? Roaming profiles?

neo468

sprkymrk wrote:

Do you have any idea of what the bottle neck is? Is it computer hardware? Lots of software loading at startup? Poorly configured group policies or maybe slow network? Roaming profiles?

: : :

The hardware is okay, it is the lack of memory, (256mb ram). With an a large amount of software loading up. The profiles are local, no network slowness issues. There is a document management system integrated with microsoft office, that is fairly memory intensive. The desktops can't be upgraded yet at this point. The group policy is well setup and maintaned. I know the prefetch cache keeps all loaded programs in the cache upon boot up and that cache can be cleared, but its not a permanent fix for performance.

Megadeth4168

10 minutes!!!!! Wow! I've seen something similar before where the wrong video drivers were installed... Downloaded the correct drivers from the manufacturers website and all was well after that...

I've also seen a situation where it was taking maybe 2 minutes to boot up (still a longs ways off from 10 though), in that situation I went into device manager, went to the Primary and secondary IDE channels and if there was not device on device1 I changed it from auto detect to none. This brought the boot time to 30 seconds on that machine.

ToBeOrNotToBe

Greetings My Friend,
there are many solutions to overcome this problem, i'm gonna list some of them below:
1- you said your network has got no slowleness issuess, then what about those memory intensive application that load on startup, if you are certain that this is the problem, just try to remove some of those application from the startup, i'm sure that will recover the system's boot time.
2- upgrading the RAM as far as i can tell is not necessary, you already have a good amount of RAM installed, but hey, if your boss is willing, you can upgrade them, nobody hates a powerful system.
3 - did you ever try to analyze the registry and the condition of the hard disk, sometimes registry errors might cause such delays on the bootup process, but a fragmented hard disk, definitly slows your system down, try to run a full registry check using (System Mechanic, Registry Mechanic ... etc), and also try to defragment the hard disk, some packages can help you do this task remotly from the server like (Perfect Disk, O&O Defrag ... etc).

try those solutions, if none of them helped recovering your system, i guess you should dig into a hardware inspection task, which is not common.

thealpha

I believe bootvis will allow you to track startup times for drivers/apps/etc and provide nice graphs helping you determine the problem.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Files/16/24059/bootvis.gif

Ricka182

Well, the X41 isn't made anymore, by either IBM, or Lenovo, so I'd find it hard to see the boss couldn't splurge for more memory. 256 is not enough!!! Especially since you have some memory intensive progs at startup, you should have around 1gb. Prices for RAM are pretty cheap right now, so try to price some, and then show the boss what kind of performance increase you can achieve. Technology is not free, make sure he knows that.....

sprkymrk

I agree with Ricka, I would try to increase the memory to at least 512MB (borrow from one workstation to double up in another temporarily to see if it helps). Megadeth had a good idea on checking device drivers, and also disabling any unused IDE channels in the bios. I never heard of bootvis that thealpha recommends, but it sounds like a good idea.

Also check your event logs for "userenv" errors, and be sure there are no Group Poicy errors. Long boot times like you are experiencing are not common.

Let us know what you find!