Comments on: Tweaking Myth: Decrease boot time with msconfig

By: Vincent Beers

Vincent Beers — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:59:00 +0000

None of the comments exactly scream “reliable”. Let’s just say that Microsoft isn’t exactly full of incompetent people who don’t know what they’re doing. Of course the system is going to be using the right amount of cores to boot the system.

Heck, most time goes into loading files from disk, which is a process that’s at least a magnitude slower than having the processors and RAM do their thing. Windows is big, so there’s a lot to load into RAM from the slow, slow hard disk before proper booting can be done. It’s why SSDs make boot times so much shorter.

By: SOE Stephanie

SOE Stephanie — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:51:00 +0000

Mine actually got faster after trying the tweak…

By: Rafael

Rafael — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:48:58 +0000

This is verifiable Microsoft fact, so sorry. You’re wrong.

By: Hollywood

Hollywood — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 09:41:00 +0000

You are totally wrong. Windows 7 64-bit on Dell XPS M1530 Laptop with 4gigs mem and E7300 C2D cpu:

With default, 53 seconds cold boot to desktop. With both cores AND maximum ram selected, 32 seconds. Completely repeatable.

Desktop: C2D E8500 Wolfdale with 8gig mem and intel 320 SSD: 36 seconds default; 19 seconds from cold boot with both cores and max-ram selected for boot.

My thought are that folks running tres-lame 32-bit are the ones crying about no change. However on TWO solid intel-based machines, I’ve seen nearly 50% boot time decreases.

-Hollywood on XtremeSystems.org

By: VincProds

VincProds — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:48:00 +0000

I know a programm which is able to perform a 5 second boot up…. but it is very trickey to install. Only one mistake and ur windows or mac will never boot up again.
Seriously guys, the only real thing is to put an SSD in your computesr/laptops… A friend of mine just installed a 120GB Force SSD i guess in his macbookpro 13″, 2010.
The mac boots up in only 15 second. (Strange is that the boot times change between 15 and 23 seconds boot time). those people how are not so fortuned, just get a hybridharddrive.

By: Rajibroy107

Rajibroy107 — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:23:00 +0000

reduce startup services go to ms config & uncheck unnecessary programs on start up it wi help boot faster really i tried it also if you want then disable gui boot

By: [How to] Improve Windows Vista and Windows 7 Boot Speed | Computer Tutorials

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:15:20 +0000

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By: C0sm0l0gist

C0sm0l0gist — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:35:28 +0000

I have a 64-bit Win7 running on an i7.

At boot time, my system had been spending over a minute on the windows flag, with the flag waving an disk access.
When I changed the number of processors from 1 to 8, that time dropped to a few seconds. No ill effects seen.

By: MagicAndre1981

MagicAndre1981 — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:49:51 +0000

I saw this myth over and over again. The people are simply to less educated to understand that this tip is nonsense.

The only way to speed up the boot process is to train ReayBoot (the advanced prefetcher from Windows Vista/7):

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=140262

By: Aesis

Aesis — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:22:18 +0000

You should note next lines from this chapter : The progress bar is set to 5 percent….(its only beginning of bootable process, what about following operations of mapping resources…)
PS Fully agree with Tim Roberts+1

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:11:56 +0000

After performing a new install of Windows 7, I thankfully performed a system backup. Shortly thereafter, I used MSCONFIG to increase the number of processors from 1 to 4. Upon reboot, my existing Windows 7 installation was corrupt and I’m forced to perform a system restore from my backup.

On another machine, I disabled the “offline files” service. Upon reboot, my Windows 7 system blue screened. Unfortunately, I had not made a backup so I was forced to reinstall Windows XP and upgrade to 7 again.

I think I’ll leave MSCONFIG alone from now on. There’s a lot of bad information on the internet on how to “fix” Windows 7 problems.

By: George L

George L — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:10:54 +0000

THANK YOU FOR DEBUNKING THIS!!!! There are countless crap blogs out there about this topic.

By: ITDEV

ITDEV — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:02:07 +0000

So im guessing its not a good or a bad thing to change this on a dual core laptop! But like Erik i have tried numerous ‘Tricks’ to try and speed up my boot time and again like Erik i cannot seem to get it belo 90 seconds! my laptop is new and all testing says its in tip top condition, but the boot time is really getting to me now!!

Please any tips on how to actually speed this up and not tips on what not to do would be soooooooooo apriciated!

By: Tim Roberts

Tim Roberts — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:30:23 +0000

The NUMPROC setting does not set “the number of processors to use during boot”. Its only purpose is to **LIMIT** the number of processors that are used during normal system operation, after boot completes. If you have a quad processor machine, and you want to do uniprocessor performance testing, you can set NUMPROC to 1. If you leave off NUMPROC, it will always be set to the total number of processors you actually have. So, the default is the maximum.

The executive summary is that, like MANY misunderstood performance settings, modifying this value can only REDUCE your overall performance.

By: Erik

Erik — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:44:48 +0000

So, how CAN you make the boot time for Windows 7 faster? When I first read the description, I realized that it should use both processors. I still tried it, but of course it didn’t do anything. Currently my boot time (from pressing the power button to the login screen) is a little over 90 seconds. Any way to make this faster, and not just myths?

By: mr Smilie

mr Smilie — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:46:16 +0000

ooo… i better put mine back to 1 then… lol

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Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:05:55 +0000

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By: Myth: Speed Up Windows 7 Boot Up Time

Myth: Speed Up Windows 7 Boot Up Time — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:14:37 +0000

[...] cores by default, so changing the values here would have no effect on your system boot time. The WithinWindows blog has covered about this myth in full details. Enjoy! var linkwithin_site_id = 40104; (function [...]

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:43:31 +0000

This “trick” actually slowed my boot and shutdown times. Can anyone tell me why? My screen flashes on shutdown, reboot, and boot. I run a HP dv6171cl 2g ram(crap-top). Also how do I change drive letters without jumping through hoops in disk manager?

By: Gary Siler

Gary Siler — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:01:37 +0000

My question then is what causes windows mail and internet explorer to attempted to dim to almost an invisible site and state that these sites are not responding. Isn’t this a cpu usage issue? Sorry for the interruption

By: Rafael

Rafael — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:02:24 +0000

Sorry, but your performance issues are not related to this value. I already explained above why. Don’t ignore the facts.

By: WolvenSpectre

WolvenSpectre — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:59:23 +0000

I got a machine built by a Microsoft partner with an AMD dual core 64bit Athlon CPU. I talked to the guy who installed XP Pro on that machine (and he is also a good friend of mine) and he didn’t know about NumProc, but on my machine it was set to 1 and considerably slowed down my boot time. I also used to boot a graphic cpu monitor that would load during boot and it would show a single core running until most of the startup programs were running. It was also apparently that way on another of his several machines. So for me changing the NumProc worked, as would removing it all together.

Maybe this got started because some other people were like me and someone/something installed added it to the Boot.ini file.

By: Krestort

Krestort — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:36:54 +0000

Recently one of my friends started an obsession with the actor Nicholas Cage (mostly because their names are both Nicholas – sounds strange but he is strange and that isn’t the point). After asking around the rest of my friends he seems to be a very controversial figure.
What does the forum think? do you love the all action superhero? Or do you hate the droning voice of the man who does nothing but action shooters?

By: bcb

bcb — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:03:34 +0000

thx..

By: hm

hm — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 07:54:31 +0000

Funny, cause I read about this tweak in a very respected printed magazine issue 02/2009 called CHIP (in Czech Republic)