Improve vista boot times

Quick boot. Quiet boot. Fast memory checking. There are a few steps you can take to cut down on the hard drive churning, semi-responsive purgatory that Vista foists upon you before it lets you use it. Why Does it Take So Long? Like Windows operating systems before it, Vista runs all kinds of routines in the background even while you do whatever it is you do with the GUI. Some of the code Windows loads up is called services; these are bits of software that facilitate activities that you might wish to engage in during your Vista session.

Others are higher-level applets called processes that tend to be more dynamic than services; processes are instances of programs that the computer is actually running. They load from the hard drive, they eat up processor cycles, and they take up precious system memory. Because Windows Vista optimizes itself to store the most-executed code on the fastest and most accessible portion of the hard drive, the load time can theoretically decrease with regular usage.

Not all programs that load themselves when your computer starts appear in the Startup folder, however. Take a look at the Notification area of your Taskbar, which is on the bottom right-hand corner of your desktop next to the clock, to see if there are a lot of icons there. Most of these icons are for programs that run in background, and with all of them starting up when you turn on your computer, it will definitely slow it down.

Many of these programs can be safely prevented from starting up automatically, so you only load them as and when you need to. Most of the time you can right-click the icon and either open the program or go straight to the program's options or preferences, and from there clear a box that says something like 'Run this program when Windows starts'.

If there are any programs that you don't need any more at all, go ahead and uninstall them to get an extra speed boost. Result: After deleting four shortcuts from the Startup folder and cutting down the Notification icons from a massive 19 down to seven, we saw a huge improvement in the computer's start-up speed. Not all programs give the option to prevent them from automatically starting up.

To disable more stubborn programs, we went in to the powerful Msconfig utility. Before using this you should create a Restore point so you can revert your PC back to its former settings should anything go wrong. Click Start and type msconfig. Click the Startup tab and you'll see a list of programs, the name of the manufacturer of each program, and the program's path where it's kept on your hard drive.

Using all this information you can tell whether these programs are essential to making your PC run properly. As a general rule, don't disable any programs from Microsoft because these are usually vital for Windows Vista.

Any drivers or programs related to your graphics card and other hardware should be left alone as well. Once you've disabled the programs you want, exit Msconfig and restart your PC.

If there are any problems or error messages, make a note and go back into Msconfig and check the boxes of the problem programs. You can also stop some services running on startup. Only stop them if you're sure that you don't need them. Again, no Microsoft services should be turned off.

If there are any services you want to stop, it's a good idea to search for the service on the internet to make sure it's okay to do so. Once again, if there are any problems, open Msconfig again and restart the services. Result: We found a number of programs that didn't need to load on startup, so we unchecked them. We also found a couple of services that ran on startup that were used by old programs we had long ago uninstalled, so we safely stopped them.

If you have more than one operating system installed on your PC — for example, you may have both Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta installed — your computer displays a menu asking you which operating system you want to load. If you don't select an operating system within 30 seconds, it automatically loads your default operating system. You can cut the amount of time your computer waits for your input before loading Windows Vista by going back to Msconfig and selecting the Boot tab.