Make windows vista startup faster

Now I understand that Windows Vista has higher system requirements than XP and during the boot it is loading a lot of new system components and driver models. The trend before Vista came along was a constant decrease in booting time. Windows XP booted up much faster than Windows did. Why is Vista not booting up faster than XP?

Despite the Vista boot slowdown, this feature guides you through the steps of getting it up-to-speed and shows you how to make Windows Vista boot up faster than XP. However, with all the new features and attractive effects, the operating system has a higher system overhead, which means your hardware has to work even harder. 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. Where it says Timeout, change the number to a lower setting, but give yourself enough time to actually make your choice.

If you only have Windows Vista installed on your machine, you don't need to complete this step. Windows Vista is great at letting you know if there's a problem with your computer. Your antivirus program should also alert you to potential problems, such as when a virus has been found or if you haven't downloaded and installed the latest update for the software. These notifications usually pop up from the notification area when you boot into Windows Vista, and on a computer that's already struggling, the appearance of such messages could slow down the start-up time even further.

You can save a few seconds by making sure that you always read all the notifications and subsequently follow their recommendations to fix the problems. Not only will this stop the notification from popping up on your screen again, but it will probably also help your computer in other ways.

Current page: Manage your start-up programs. If you're encountering a problem or need some advice with your PC or Mac, drop him a line on Twitter.

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