How fast is your boot-up?

[SadGamerGeek]

I've just spent some time tinkering with Windows XP services & BIOS stuff to reduce my boot time. I've disabled all the services I don't need & turned off all ports & drives I don't use in BIOS. I'm now getting from power button depressed to MameWah screen up in 37 seconds (on a 1.8Ghz P4 with 256 MB RAM). I'm pretty pleased with that, but I'm wondering how it compares to everyone else.

Anyone else got any timings (or hints/tips on this) they'd like to share?

Cheers,

Richard

[Thenasty]

from turning power on to MENU, 15 seconds.

[SadGamerGeek]

from turning power on to MENU, 15 seconds.

Wow!

The benefits of DOS on a super fast PC!

[wpcmame]

Power button to advmenu (or whatever game I was in),  ~20 seconds.

Using hibernation in XP.

[Brad]

From cold to Mamewah.... 23 seconds.

Don't know what the deal is but thats pretty quick for an AMD 1.2gig Duron, 256meg ram and Windows XP.

Brad

[youki]

From cold to AtomicFE  on XP on a Athlon 2000+  with a standard speed hd   (7200t/m i think)  11  seconds!

The machine is dedicated to my cab , so i removed all i don't need , stop all services i don't need. No Internet , no .NET , no Printer , nothing...

On the same machine but under DOS from cold to ADVMENU  : 15seconds.

[jcrouse]

Athlon XP 2600 with a fresh install = cold on to MameWAH in 13 seconds. This is my Bartop system.

John

[Lilwolf]

Don't you find that you need a network?  (just to update / maintenance?) 

Anyone find any good ways to optimize 98 boot?   I only have one legal license to XP and a TON for 98 so thats whats on my cab.

[Chris]

From cold to AtomicFE

[youki]

Sounds like you forgot SmartDrive in DOS.

No, SmartDrive is here. 

Dos just consume time to :
- load smartDrive and  load soundDriver.  and in addition, i don't need to load Arcmon.sys because i have an arcadeVGA.

XP is really fast to boot and i think drivers for HD access are more compliant with modern HD than the poor old dos.

I'm almost sure by doing few more optimisation i could reach under the 9seconds to boot on the Front End under XP.

[Fat_Trucker]

Athlon XP2800, 512Mb Ram, 7,200rpm HDD. Windows XP. Everything stripped down purely for use in the cab.

Boots to my intro movie from cold in 25 - 30 seconds.

[markb]

XP3200, 768mb ram, dual boot system.

XP takes 30 secs
Win98 15 secs

So much for progress.

[Chris]

XP3200, 768mb ram, dual boot system.

XP takes 30 secs
Win98 15 secs

So much for progress.

XP's loading up a lot more stuff than 98.

[markb]

XP3200, 768mb ram, dual boot system.

XP takes 30 secs
Win98 15 secs

So much for progress.

XP's loading up a lot more stuff than 98.

That may be but why does the install screen tell you that it boots quicker than previous versions?

[Chris]

XP3200, 768mb ram, dual boot system.

XP takes 30 secs
Win98 15 secs

So much for progress.

XP's loading up a lot more stuff than 98.

That may be but why does the install screen tell you that it boots quicker than previous versions?

XP is not a version of 98; it's a version of NT or 2000.  I believe it does boot quicker than those.

[jcrouse]

XP boots MUCH faster than a comparable install of NT or 2K.

John

[Tahnok]

XP boots MUCH faster than a comparable install of NT or 2K.

John

That would explain why I can never seem to get my boot time under 50 sec. I also use the computer for several other things so I have to keep .net, networking, printer and all that other stuff.

[youki]

XP is the fastest booting OS Microsoft did.   But just compare the same thing.

Under Dos load : a sound driver, a network driver, a video driver, a usb driver , etc..etc...

do the same thing under 98  then under XP.  And you will see that XP is terribly Fast!

As i said in a previous post, i boot from Cold to my Front End on XP in 11 seconds.   Under Dos, i boot in 15! on the same machine.

Just stop all service you don't need, remove driver you don't need etc..etc..

But for sure, is not really easy to find what you don't need!

Soon, i should do (just have to find time!  ) an utility integrated with AtomicFE to maximize XP loading speed in case of a dedicated usage in a cabinet.

[nipsmg]

It's no more than 11 seconds, could be  quicker on my Athlon XP 64bit 3200+ (1gb ram, serial ATA).

I never really timed it, but it's definitely that fast.  and I didn't remove anything.

I also count time to desktop.. because time to login screen doesn't really mean anyhting.  After you l og in, windows still has to load a whole bunch of crap.

However, I JUST installed XP on this thing.  as I start installing programs that are going to dump all their stupid crap in the system tray and have to load on boot, I'm sure loading times will increase exponentially 

[Thenasty]

now that we got the BOOT TIME all down pack how about SHUTDOWN TIME ? 

It takes me less than a second to shutdown (machine completely off).   

[markb]

Yet again for me win98 wins handsdown on shutdown

Win98 - 5 secs
Win XP - 20 secs

BTW this is a dual boot system so uses identical hardware.

[JoyMonkey]

Shutdown takes about 2-3 seconds for me. Depends how fast I can get up and pull the plug out of the wall! I've never built a Windows based cab

My startup takes a little while right now; because I've got it set up to copy everything except roms onto a ramdrive and then run it from there (speeds up running time). Without the ramdrive, running directly from a CF card I think I had it at about 5 seconds, most of which is waiting for the stupid Dell bios screen to go away.

[youki]

I had it at about 5 seconds,

under to boot to the Front End?       (you have no sound driver, no cd drive  , 4 games in the front end?) 

May be you are under Linux?


concerning Shutdown time, on my machine is about 3-4 seconds under XP.

[Chris]

concerning Shutdown time, on my machine is about 3-4 seconds under XP.

Mine's about the same, unless power management has shut down the hard drive; then it's closer to 10 seconds.

[JoyMonkey]

I had it at about 5 seconds,

under to boot to the Front End?       (you have no sound driver, no cd drive  , 4 games in the front end?) 

May be you are under Linux?

Nope, it's DOS.
I'm using an old Dell with onboard ISA soundblaster sound- doesn't require a sound driver to be loaded.
I don't have a CD Drive (I use a CompactFlash card instead of a hard drive and just pull it out and put it in my main PC if I want to update roms).
I use GameLauncher which loads pretty much instantly, even if you've got 4000 games in one list (so long as you use a .rom file instead of having it read all your roms each time).
The low seek-time of CompactFlash also decreases loading time where small files are concerned.