Guide to Windows XP optimisation

9/ The startup or Boot

The final optimisation of Windows XP is the startup which we will see here. All the previous paragraphs should be followed to so that this last step is done efficiently.

Start up time and choice of system
By default, if you have multiple operating systems installed on the machine, the selection menu will display for a period of 30 seconds which is actually quite a long time.

How can we change this'

Go to the start menu, control panel and double click on system. Go to the “advanced” tab and “startup and shutdown” and click on “settings”. The first box allows you to change the time that the menu is displayed by default. For these options to be valid then you need to have multiple operating systems installed on the system.

BootVis

• Official Website

Bootvis is a visualisation and optimisation tool. This utility optimises Windows XP’s boot procedure so that when you start it Windows doesn’t do anything that isn’t necessary, which is why you should see an immediate gain in time.
There is a tip dedicated to this here.

How does it work'

Download and load. In the main menu, go to “Trace” and click on “Next Boot and Driver trace”. A “Trace Repetitions” screen will appear. Here you need to click on “OK” and restart. During the reboot, Bootvis will automatically start and analyse your systems boot procedure. Once this has completed, return to the “Trace” menu and click on “Optimise system” and restart. This time, when your system is booting, wait for the “Optimising System” screen and don’t do anything until this process has finished.

NB (1): Bootvis requires the scheduler and the “COM+ Event System” services. If you have a PC with a Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading you should have SP2 installed to be able to continue with the tracing on your PC.

NB (2): This program is not supported by Microsoft, which in other words there is no support if you have a problem.