In-depth understanding and optimization of WinXP boot (b)

Let's take a look at how the system should be optimized if the motherboard BIOS does not support the SBFS specification. Since the BIOS menus of different manufacturers are different, only a few items to be concerned can be given here. The menu or option names actually displayed by the BIOS may differ:

▲ Enable Quick POST (fast Power on self test). This will disable operations such as full memory checking and launching Logo.

▲ Disable Boot up floppy seek. Searching for a floppy drive will take a certain amount of startup time.

▲ Adjust the order of the boot device, preferably set to “C only” (only boot from the hard disk). This not only improves the startup speed (avoids the system checking for unbootable devices, such as floppy drives without floppy disks), but also prevents the system from booting from a floppy drive or other device. When there are special needs, such as the inability to boot with the C drive, then in the BIOS to change the boot device to a device such as a floppy drive or CD-ROM.

▲ Enable PnP-OS (Plug and Play OS). This option prohibits the BIOS from detecting the device and leaving the task of detecting the device to the operating system. For mainstream Windows operating systems, enabling this option can significantly reduce startup time.

For operating systems, the most important thing to improve startup speed is to prohibit various unnecessary programs and services from starting automatically. Win XP provides a handy tool: Click "Run" in the "Start" menu, run msconfig, and then disable all unnecessary programs from starting automatically.

Finally, a tool is recommended that analyzes, displays, and optimizes the startup process of the system. This tool is BootVis, you can search for "BootVis" from the Microsoft Download Center, because the download Url is very long, it will not be given here. After downloading, unzip and click BootVis.exe to run. Close all other running software and select BootVis's menu File>New>Next Boot+ Drivers Trace. The system will restart in 15 seconds. After rebooting, wait a moment, because there are some files to write to disk - you can see the corresponding prompt. At the end of this process, BootVis starts again and displays the chart shown in Figure 1. For a detailed description of these charts, see the help of BootVis, which will not be explained here. If you don't want to know the details of BootVis' work, it's enough to know that these diagrams describe the time it takes to load the various parts during startup.

Figure 1

If you want to optimize the system, you should repeat the above process 4-5 times. When you are done, select BootVis's menu Trace>Optimize System and wait for a reboot. This time the startup time will be much longer than before. After logging in to Win XP, defragment is performed immediately. In the future, you will be able to enjoy the feeling of deep optimization after the startup speed.