Vista so slow booting up and shutting down

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Vista's slow boot and shutdown times are common complaints, with users noting that it often takes several minutes, which contrasts sharply with the faster performance of older operating systems like Windows 98 and XP. While Vista is expected to perform comparably to XP, various issues can contribute to its sluggishness, including the presence of unnecessary startup programs, excessive temporary internet files, and the impact of visual effects, indexing, and prefetch settings. Users recommend using tools like CCleaner to clear junk files and adjusting settings in the Control Panel to improve performance. Disabling visual effects and indexing can provide a noticeable speed boost, especially on laptops with slower hard drives. Hardware specifications play a significant role in performance, with a minimum of 2GB of RAM and a dual-core processor being ideal for running Vista smoothly. Overall, many users express dissatisfaction with Vista, often preferring to revert to XP for its superior speed and usability.
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I have vista installed on my laptop and it is so slow booting up and shutting down
(several minutes) ,what is vista doing in this time, i remember win 98 being much faster.
 
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wolram said:
I have vista installed on my laptop and it is so slow booting up and shutting down
(several minutes) ,what is vista doing in this time, i remember win 98 being much faster.

You can always use "Stand By" instead of shutting it down.

I moved to XP from Vista for my laptop because Vista sucks.
 


wolram said:
I have vista installed on my laptop and it is so slow booting up and shutting down
(several minutes) ,what is vista doing in this time, i remember win 98 being much faster.

For the most part Vista 'should' start up and shut down about the same as XP. Otherwise, something is causing the slowdown.

It may be a few programs in particular which are causing it. Try going to Control Panel -> Performance Information -> Advanced Tools (On the Navigation Bar)...

See if there's anything Vista is reporting as a problem under 'Performance Issues'.
 


B. Elliott said:
For the most part Vista 'should' start up and shut down about the same as XP. Otherwise, something is causing the slowdown.

It may be a few programs in particular which are causing it. Try going to Control Panel -> Performance Information -> Advanced Tools (On the Navigation Bar)...

See if there's anything Vista is reporting as a problem under 'Performance Issues'.

Vista was really slow for me.
2 GHz, 2.49 GB RAM

Sometimes, lots of internet junk get loaded to hard-drive which also makes computer slow.
I use CCleaner for getting rid of it. You need to clean temporary internet folder every once a week.

Also, go to
Run and enter "msconfig"

In the start up tab, uncheck all the junk.
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9721/picbv3.png
 
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rootX said:
Vista was really slow for me.
2 GHz, 2.49 GB RAM

Sometimes, lots of internet junk get loaded to hard-drive which also makes computer slow.
I use CCleaner for getting rid of it. You need to clean temporary internet folder every once a week.

Also, go to
Run and enter "msconfig"

In the start up tab, uncheck all the junk.
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9721/picbv3.png

A lot of the performance potential of Vista is tied with the visual effects, indexing and prefetch. If you turn down the visuals you can get a decent boost in performance. With Vistas prefetch, you have to, for a lack of better wording 'train' Vista what programs you use the most. There's actually a few tutorials on the internet that can guide you through training Vista to access your most used programs more efficiently. The prefetch is also what Vista spends a good percentage of the time playing with during the startup and shutdown process.

One thing you can experiment with is turning off Indexing. If you don't modify or move around a lot of files on a daily basis, turning it off may seed up Vista a good bit. Try it out for a week and see if you notice a difference...

Start -> (type) Indexing Service -> press [Enter] -> Modify & show all locations -> Uncheck every box except the 'Start Menu'.

The performance impact of prefetch, visual effects and indexing is also depends greatly on your hardware. More so the hard drive performance with prefetch and indexing, and the video card with the visual effects. Laptop hard drives typically (75% out there) aren't that fast rpm-wise to help preserve battery life. If you have nearly every Vista service running, it can work a laptop hard drive harder than a Virginia coal miner. It's all in how well you can manage your options and compromise with your hardware available.

I have Vista running on a 3.2 GHz P4 with 2GB or ram, and it runs very smoothly. Then again, it also has a 10K RPM Raptor along with an 8600GT. My power rig with an E6700 Core2Duo clocked at 3.0GHz and a 768MB 8800GTX card whizzes through startup and shutdown.. ~15 seconds. If it takes more than a minute and a half, something is wrong or configured incorrectly.
 
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Cool tips, thanks guys.
 


I have to agree with you. XP is much easier to use and screw "administrative privileges" I had heard from a GS guy,for I was going to switch from vista to XP,that XP will be useless, for MS in making an updated version of Vista. He said it is the new trend.
(probably trying to sell me the first copy)
 


Is it true the Microsoft will stop support for all except vista soon?
 


wolram said:
Is it true the Microsoft will stop support for all except vista soon?

No. They have already stopped mainstream sales of XP, though -- that happened back in June. Mainstream Support lasts till April 2009 and Extended Support till April 2014.
 
  • #10


so he was trying to sell me, thanks guys
 
  • #11


CRGreathouse said:
No. They have already stopped mainstream sales of XP, though -- that happened back in June. Mainstream Support lasts till April 2009 and Extended Support till April 2014.
What a shame. XP is so much faster than Vista. I regretted not requesting an XP install for my Vista pre-installed laptop.
 
  • #12


Disabling Aero would speed Vista up, especially if you're running Vista Ultimate
 
  • #13


wolram said:
Is it true the Microsoft will stop support for all except vista soon?

Is Vista reporting any performance issues?
 
  • #14


B. Elliott said:
Is Vista reporting any performance issues?


There is quite a bit about performance issues on the net, some blame computer spec, mine was sold with vista installed so that should not be my case.
There is even a speed up tool
http://transitional.faster-pc.net/related/english/speedup-vista/?gclid=CNTyj4HTiZUCFQ2qQwodKhqQrQ&hit=1&adurl=644 .
 
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  • #15


wolram said:
There is quite a bit about performance issues on the net, some blame computer spec, mine was sold with vista installed so that should not be my case.
There is even a speed up tool
http://transitional.faster-pc.net/related/english/speedup-vista/?gclid=CNTyj4HTiZUCFQ2qQwodKhqQrQ&hit=1&adurl=644 .

I think majority of people I know aren't happy with vista and vista mostly comes with new laptops/computers. So, they all moved back to XP
 
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  • #16


wolram said:
There is quite a bit about performance issues on the net, some blame computer spec, mine was sold with vista installed so that should not be my case.
There is even a speed up tool
http://transitional.faster-pc.net/related/english/speedup-vista/?gclid=CNTyj4HTiZUCFQ2qQwodKhqQrQ&hit=1&adurl=644 .

So Vista itself is saying that nothing is wrong? Does your Performance window say anything like this one does?

http://vista-agent.com/img/vista_performance2.jpg
 
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  • #17


Vista on my laptop (a recently purchased Dell Inspiron) is reasonably fast. But I have almost nothing installed.

However I have noticed a few extremely irritating peculiarities which I am not sure are dues to the fact that it's Vista per se. I wonder if someone could help me take care of one of them in particular.

Sometimes, just moving the pointer over some button will activate the function even if I don't click on it. This is very frustrating because the computer keesp doing things that I did not want it to do! And I have almost lost files this way because it saved things over other files because of this.


Does anyone know how to disable this very irritating "feature"?
 
  • #18


Does this RegCure actually work? I have Vista on my laptop, and it runs slow sometimes and I want to know if there is a good and cheap way to fix it or just improve it.
 
  • #19


B. Elliott said:
So Vista itself is saying that nothing is wrong? Does your Performance window say anything like this one does?

http://vista-agent.com/img/vista_performance2.jpg

I have a bare bones system, the only externals i have is a router and printer other wise the system is virginal, the only down loaded program is google tool bar, i dump all the old internet files every week, it only gets used for the internet and the occasional print out.
 
  • #20


wolram said:
I have a bare bones system, the only externals i have is a router and printer other wise the system is virginal, the only down loaded program is google tool bar, i dump all the old internet files every week, it only gets used for the internet and the occasional print out.

What are your computer specs?
 
  • #21


nrqed said:
Sometimes, just moving the pointer over some button will activate the function even if I don't click on it. This is very frustrating because the computer keesp doing things that I did not want it to do! And I have almost lost files this way because it saved things over other files because of this.

Is that with the touchpad or the mouse?
 
  • #23


Greg Bernhardt said:
This is a tad off topic, but it's quite interesting marketing wise
http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

They must have done something to vista and/or computer :blushing:

I get frustrated whenever I see Vista on any computer.
 
  • #24


nrqed said:
Vista on my laptop (a recently purchased Dell Inspiron) is reasonably fast. But I have almost nothing installed.

However I have noticed a few extremely irritating peculiarities which I am not sure are dues to the fact that it's Vista per se. I wonder if someone could help me take care of one of them in particular.

Sometimes, just moving the pointer over some button will activate the function even if I don't click on it. This is very frustrating because the computer keesp doing things that I did not want it to do! And I have almost lost files this way because it saved things over other files because of this.


Does anyone know how to disable this very irritating "feature"?

pissibly because your touch pad is set to click when you tap it? I had this problem as well when I first got a new laptop back 3 years ago. It was set so you can tap the touchpad to click instead of clicking the buttons. I didnt like this at first so I turned it off because it was clicking stuff i didnt want it to. Once I got more used to the touchpad I put it back on. I am at work so i don't have my laptop but if you play around in control panel you should find it. Synaptics pointing device or somthing like that.

As far as vista goes i have a 1.63 ghz AMD turion clocked at 3.11 ghz and 1gb of ram, I like vista but agree that is is somewhat slow, startups not that bad tho, I just really like the visual effects it has and some of the new features like speech recogntion. Vista is still a farily new OS so I am hoping it gets better as 1000 dollar laptops are gettin more powerful and have they realesed any servive packs for it yet? i don't think so. Vista requires a minumum of 1gb or ram so it seems like you can't expect much from it if you only have the bare minimum. My new notebook should be arriving shortly it has 1.83 intel duo core and 4gb of ram so we'll see how it runs vista. I for one have gotten used to vista and I refuse to go back to XP, then again sometimes I take visuals over performance.
 
  • #25


Service pack 1 has been out since the beginning of February '08. If I was to take a guess, SP2 is easily a year away.

BTW, out of curiosity, how were you able to overclock that 1.63 Turion to 3.11? That's a 91% overclock.
 
  • #26


I have no clue i don't really know how to do stuff like that haha, but its a duo core and when running tests on system requirements lab that's what it said for the speed. "you have 1.63ghz clocked at 3.11ghz"

www.systemrequirementslab.com
 
  • #27


guys,
if you want to run vista then you should have at least a dual core processor with 2 gb ram. otherwise vista is $hit.
 
  • #28


haseebmahmud said:
guys,
if you want to run vista then you should have at least a dual core processor with 2 gb ram. otherwise vista is $hit.

Vista runs fine on a 3.8GHz 570J P4 with 2GB of ram, and that's now a four year old processor. In fact, a good friend is still running that setup today, albeit with better video cards.

You'd be very suprised how well Vista actually performs with older hardware. Going totally against the grain of typical internet rumors and myths.
 
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