Monday, August 20, 2007

How To Boot Your XP Faster

Follow the following steps

1. Open notepad.exe, type "del c:\windows\prefetch\ntosboot-*.* /q" (without the quotes) & save as "ntosboot.bat" in c:\
2. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "gpedit.msc".
3. Double click "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and double click again on "Shutdown" in the right window.
4. In the new window, click "add", "Browse", locate your "ntosboot.bat" file & click "Open".
5. Click "OK", "Apply" & "OK" once again to exit.
6. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "devmgmt.msc".
7. Double click on "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
8. Right click on "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Properties".
9. Select the "Advanced Settings" tab then on the device or 1 that doesn't have 'device type' greyed out select 'none' instead of 'autodetect' & click "OK".
10. Right click on "Secondary IDE channel", select "Properties" and repeat step 9.
11. Reboot your computer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have seen many tips to improve boot time but this is by far the worst. Unlike the majority who read this, I actually understand what it does. Steps 1-5 create a script that deletes the “NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.pf” file on computer shutdown. This file was specifically designed by Microsoft to optimize boot performance. How anyone could believe that deleting this file would improve boot time is baffling. It could only come from someone with a very twisted understanding of how prefetch works. Be very sure, doing this will not improve boot time, it will degrade it - possibly seriously. Steps 6-10 will remove a short delay in bootup, probably not noticeable.

This "tip" can be found on many web sites, usually with the exact wording. No one claims any knowlege of how it is supposed to work. Obviously the original author had absolutely no understanding of how prefetch works. If it actually worked, why did Microsoft not implement it? Does the author believe he understands the system better than Microsoft?

References:
http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000743.html
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000024.html
http://djlizard.net/2006/06/02/157/

Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA, Network+, A+