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Home > People > NickO > Blog

How long does it take your Windows Vista PC to startup?

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We want to know whether your computer is dog-slow or faster than a speeding bullet!
By NickO on 16 September 2008

In Issue 24 of the mag we're trying to find out how long it takes your PC to startup, from when your first turn it on till you're able to open and use a program (such as Internet Explorer) without any stalling.

Does it take an eternity, or is it like a steam train?

Tell us how fast your startup is by posting in the comments below this blog and by clicking here and voting in the poll, and we'll publish the results in Issue 24 of Windows Vista: The Official Magazine.

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Appreciate this article? If so please vote positively to help push it up the rankings . This helps the community find good material, and your voting enables our systems automatically personalize your experience.

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Mine takes up to 3 minutes to boot up.

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16/09/08 | 07:31

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jbvistapro

I only have 1G of RAM, so mine, with Vista Ultimate and Windows OneCare, takes about 3-5 minutes.

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19/09/08 | 03:30

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Mine only takes about a minute to boot. I use Advanced Windows Care to keep it clean. :)

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16/09/08 | 07:48

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1'52"

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16/09/08 | 08:00

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about a minute

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17/09/08 | 12:50

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boobyv

a minute or less

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17/09/08 | 03:31

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Minute or less. Used a tweak to enable both cores during boot.

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17/09/08 | 04:25

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anonymous

Windows will always use all available cores, booting or otherwise.

The "tweak" is bogus.

The setting in msconfig is to LIMIT the number of cores/cpus used during operation as a trouble shooting measure, to determine if using multiple cores/cpus is causing problems with some driver or software.

Setting it to 2, or 4, or 8 if you have that many cores, doesn't force Windows to use more cores during boot.

My system takes an average of 70 seconds, quad core, with this "tweak" and without.

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17/09/08 | 06:41

anonymous

My intel quadcore boots at around 35 second it seems to vary a little though sometime it takes around 40seconds.

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18/09/08 | 10:16

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mine takes 10

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17/09/08 | 07:23

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120 secs

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17/09/08 | 08:41

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Bellaar

Mine takes 70 seconds.

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18/09/08 | 09:21

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Thanks to everyone who's commented so far. Make sure you also click on the link in the blog and vote in the poll! Thanks, Nick

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18/09/08 | 02:24

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It takes just under a minute to boot up. The key thing for me seemed to be the quantity of RAM, as when I upraded the RAM from 1GB to 4GB on my laptop, the timings came right down from minutes to seconds. Tasks such as defragmenting the hard disk or cleaning out unwanted files had an unnoticeable impact

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19/09/08 | 09:04

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ghmpm

My Dell M1530 takes appx 1' 20" to boot but this includes connecting to a wi-fi network each time.

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19/09/08 | 01:39

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mine takes around 90 seconds

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19/09/08 | 04:08

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mine about 1 min

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19/09/08 | 04:41

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I havae a computer wuth 1GB of ram, I do not know if it is because of that and also I have a lot of programs on it, but it takes about 10 minutes to be fully working

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19/09/08 | 04:43

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I have Vista Home Premium, 3gb using Verizon DSL Broadband. It can take up to 3 minutes just to get connected and I live in a major US city. Frustrating!

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19/09/08 | 05:58

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My HP m8407c with Vista Home Premium 64-bit installed with Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 and 4 gig of ram plus another 4 gig plug in and it takes around 4 minutes before I can actually get a program to open and run. Shortly after the desktop comes up in around 90 seconds I'm able to click on a program but it just sits there in limbo until almost all processes are complete. Dog slow even with much tweaking. I'm removing the 64 bit vista shortly and going back to the 32 bit. Bet that fixes the problem.

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19/09/08 | 06:37

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anonymous

I have same type of configuration quad core 4 gig ram boot up time about the same etc, with 64 bit its a pain sometimes with compatibility. How do you get back to 32 bit?

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22/09/08 | 03:22

Ideutch1

32bit os on a 64bit pc? Or are you running a 64bit os on a 32bit pc? I have an HP m8150n, quad core. Same processor as yours and mine is 32bit. I boot up in about a minute, on vista ultimate. I dont know if the 32bit vista will even work on a 64bit pc. Also; when you use vista 32bit, it will only recognize 3gb ram. No matter how much you have.

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26/10/08 | 07:47

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Who boots up anymore, unless it's a restart from an update. My machine sleeps and takes 4-5 seconds to come back to a usable state.

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19/09/08 | 07:08

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about a minute

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19/09/08 | 10:01

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About 30 seconds to get to the Login screen. Then at least 2 minutes to load everything (which isn't much) although I think the sidebar is the issue.

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19/09/08 | 11:20

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30 seconds

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20/09/08 | 10:33

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Mine takes 2 min tp boot for windows vista ultimate performance edition

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21/09/08 | 06:10

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1min 20 secs on vista premium with 1gb ram i reinstalled vista though cos i had 34000 infections of spyware and mcafee dint even notice them!

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21/09/08 | 08:43

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I'm still running Home Basic ,so it take's until lunch !

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21/09/08 | 05:53

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3 minutes of which 1 is waiting for the sidebar to load.

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22/09/08 | 11:12

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NickO

Thanks everyone for the comments so far - makes for interesting reading. Keep them coming!

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22/09/08 | 03:29

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terence073

Friend Nick, ....."interesting reading"!?!? What is to be done about it? THAT would (hopefully) help.

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31/10/08 | 04:38

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NickO

Oh, and please remember to click on the link to vote in the poll. Thanks, Nick

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22/09/08 | 03:29

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Mine takes at least 10 minutes. I get to the Welcome screen for initial log-on in about 2 minutes, but then Windows stalls for many minutes, despite disabling all but the essentials in Startup via msconfig. It drives me to distraction!!

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25/09/08 | 01:42

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Sybex

Mine takes 1 minute 7 seconds to get to the log on screen.

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27/09/08 | 01:46

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anandk

How are you measuring boot-time ??? To measure Windows Vista Startup or Boot Time exactly, see http://www.winvistaclub.com/t212.html

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05/10/08 | 09:48

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Just bought a new Mesh PC running Vista X64. I have thrown tons of stuff at it including Kaspersky Internet security. With no tweaks it is usually up and running in less than a minute.

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10/10/08 | 05:08

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about 1 minute from cold state to internet.ultimate, good god i thought everyone knew that vista is a memory hungry OS. the more ram the faster the ram you have the better your system will run. get a better video card as well and a bigger faster hdd eg"sata and windows vista will fly around the room.

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10/10/08 | 09:34

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Gort999

54 seconds for Power on to desktop of WIndows Vista Ultimate. 2.5 Gig of RAM. Nvidia GeForce 8600GT 256 Meg video card and Intel Duo Core 2 1.86 Gig CPU.

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10/10/08 | 10:22

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1'42"

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11/10/08 | 09:48

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Mine takes about a minute but why does that drat sidebar takes so long to boot ?

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12/10/08 | 12:16

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theonetruesplit

My Dell XPS 420 (Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, 2x 320 GB HDs, Intel RAID controller, nVidia Ge-Force 8600 GTS) takes about 40 seconds from power on to the desktop (not that my login is NOT password) controller. As it's main use is a 3D CGI Workstation and not on the Internet all un-required start-up programs and services are disabled. Overall performance is very good (CINEBENCH cb mark of 10532) and constant 30fps in Flight Simulator Gold with ALL display options at max settings! Not that I'm boastin ;-)

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13/10/08 | 12:16

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tonyw

just under 60secs

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20/10/08 | 10:19

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My PC is usable about 35 seconds after pressing the power button from off not stand-by, I'm running a pentium dual core E2200 with 2gig of RAM and an ATI Radeon 2400 Pro graphics card. I have a WEI of 4.0. Overall I'm very pleased with the performance compared with my previous PC running XP Pro.

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21/10/08 | 04:44

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50 seconds to power up 7 seconds to shut down.

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22/10/08 | 04:19

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dpt308

30seconds, 2 WD 10,00rpm raptor hard drives in raid. 4Gigs of DDR8500 memory, Intel core2 duo 8400 3.0Ghz, vista 64bit home premium, ATI Radeon HD 3800 by Sapphire video card, runs fast and smooth.

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25/10/08 | 10:58

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Rhillo

30-40sec.I have turned off all unneccessary programs at startup.I did this using windows defender.Makes a big difference.

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26/10/08 | 03:44

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1 min 30 sec sometimes quicker i have a hp dv6803 it use to take up to 4 mins or longer but with the help of the mag and google... the best tip is to ditch the side bar and download regcure,defrag and disc clean oh and delete internet temp files all the time.

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26/10/08 | 11:36

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Vista needs about 90sec till all my startup-programms are loaded(the longest time need TRILLIAN to load and make the conections to all the e-mail programms!)- without Trillia