Speed up boot times using Bootvis
Posted on March 31, 2008 at 5:49 am
Wish you could speed up the boot time in Windows? One of the most tedious aspects of computing is undoubtedly the infamous boot. The tiring, long and boring process that no one likes. Why not speed it up a bit? Apart from saving you from wanting to tear your hair out, a faster boot up can be really useful when you need some information quickly.
There are a number of ways to speed up you Windows boot up, but the most effective is to use a free tool made by Microsoft called Bootvis. You can download Bootvis here. Its a small 1MB download, so go right ahead and download it.
- Once you’ve downloaded Bootvis, run the file and install it by following the on-screen prompts.
- Run Bootvis by navigating to "Bootvis" under "Microsoft Bootvis" in your start menu.
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You should now be looking at the home screen of Bootvis:
- Looks complicated doesn’t it? Well that’s what this article is here for. Luckily, there isn’t much you have to do to optimize your boot times. First, just click "Next Boot + Driver Delays" under the "Trace" menu.
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Now, a screen will pop-up asking for the number of repetitions (shown below) .
- Leave it at the defaults, and before clicking OK, save anything you are working on, because you will be prompted to reboot your system. Once you’ve saved anything important, click OK, and allow your system to reboot.
- Once your system has rebooted, it will appear as if nothing is happening, but Bootvis is actually loading up detailed graphs of the trace. Leave it alone for a few minutes, and Bootvis will eventually pop-up.
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Now, you will be looking at the graphs I mentioned earlier (shown below). They may look very complicated but it’s more for Bootvis than for you.
- Now, click "Optimize System" under "Trace". Once again, Bootvis will prompt you to restart. Allow it to do so.
- Once you have rebooted, Bootvis begins the actual optimization, as is pictured below.
Allow Bootvis to finish optimizing, and you’re done! Your boot ups should now be noticeably nippier!
This is a guest post written by Om J. Bathija, a tech enthusiast and blogger.
» Filed Under Computer Tips
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Comments
11 Responses to “Speed up boot times using Bootvis”
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Speed up boot time in Windows Vista using Windows Performance Toolkit Says:
[...] at Online Tech Tips, I wrote a post on how to use Bootvis to speed up the boot time on your Windows XP or Vista PC. It’s a good tool for optimizing the Windows boot up process for [...]
November 18th, 2008 at 5:12 am
does it cause any problems later , i am using vista ( home premium ) .
I use Win XP, and have recently downloaded Bootvis…and I find my system booting up faster…but it doesnt show the graphs….and a window pops up mentioning “Bootvis has encountered a problem and needs to close”…and then I have to click the “close” tab…and it closes. Any suggestions??
regards
Bidyut
Hola les escribo porque estoy con un problema en una Notebook Toshiba Satellite A 55 Series Celeron M ( 1,40Ghz) con 512 de memoria ram; la cual luego de haberle instalado el Nod32 version 2.70 se ha vuelto demasiado lenta en el inicio de Windows Home; por lo que tuve que instalarle el Bootvis y realmente no entiendo muy bien los parámetros gráficos y la configuracion del mismo ya que no son similares con respecto a otros foros.
Les escribo a Ud./s porque este sitio me parecio mas simple; esperando una resuesta satisfactoria les saluda atte.
Daniela Bordis
Per Microsoft, this does not speed up boot time:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/fastboot/default.mspx
From Microsoft’s page, “Please note that Bootvis.exe is not a tool that will improve boot/resume performance for end users. Contrary to some published reports, Bootvis.exe cannot reduce or alter a system’s boot or resume performance. The boot optimization routines invoked by Bootvis.exe are built into Windows XP. These routines run automatically at pre-determined times as part of the normal operation of the operating system.”
@Bidyut – I’m getting that same error :-/
I went from a 6m 40s boot up on a Lenovo X41 tablet PC to 6m 10s… sigh. So, a difference, yes. Worth it for 30s? Took me about 30m, so I suppose I’ll need to restart 60 more times to break even.
DO NOT USE!!! I am using a XP. When i run this like the instructions said, it stuffed up my whole computer and i hade to do a system restore and is back to normal.
Hi,
I hope you will understand me. I download bootvis, run it and done everything as you advice on your website.
While optimazing the system for boot performance 2 error message appears;
the first one:Timeout while waiting for schedule service to start and
the second one:failed to defrag the system. Please defrag the disk manually before starting tracing.
I defrag HDD yesterday using smart defrag tool.
Any suggestion!
best regards, ksenija
Bootvis was made for XP and XP-sp1. According to Microsoft Bootvis won’t do its job correctly on XP-sp2 and above. As Oswald already wrote: The optimisation-routines are built-in in WindowsXP. But you can try Bootvis anyway as it ist the only Boot-Optimizer for WindowsXP – but don’t expect too much…
While the automatic “make my pc boot faster” description for this tool in the article is misleading, this can be a very useful tool for identifying causes for slow boot times if you understand what it’s telling you and prepared to drill into the details.
For example, I had a machine which was booting VERY slowly (10-15 mins at least). Using bootvis, I could see the OS was trashing the hard disk access, the MFT which had grown large enough to need a 2nd area on the disk to hold it all, and each file access was requiring 2 hard disk accesses on drastically separate areas of the hard disk. I tracked this down to having Cygwin installed on the system drive, and Cygwin includes 10,000s of tiny icon files etc, which had blown the MFT and killed system performance – not just the boot process. By simply moving the Cygwin folder to a separate partition (on the same hard disk), the system MFT became manageable again and the boot times dropped to a few minutes.
It’s also possible to identify particular device drivers which can halt the boot process waiting for events, and sometimes it’s worth setting some services to delayed start, etc., to allow the core system files to complete loading. This may not reduce the final boot time but it may make the system ‘usable’ much earlier in the boot process and the final non-essential services can continue loading in the background.
It’s a pity MS have entirely dropped support for this tool and it needs to be used with care and only really of use if you understand the underlying system in contrast to the impression this article gives.