Tag: boot

Make Windows 7 faster – Part 3

October 12, 2009 by Jason

Before that the first and second part we continue to publish series of articles.

41. Go Live. Many applications installed on past versions of Windows have been removed. Starting with Windows 7, these applications (and a few others not typically installed with Windows) have been moved into the Live Essentials downloadable applications, at download.live.com. These applications include Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Family Safety and a few others.

42. Remove Apps. Although some applications have been moved off of Windows to become an optional download, other apps, such as IE8, Media Player, Media Center and DVD Maker are still included. In times past, especially when it came to IE, the applications were tied into the OS. However, in Windows 7 you can easily remove them if desired. Head to the Program and Features applet in Control Panel and select the “Turn Windows features on or off” link in the top left-hand corner. Then you can select the checkbox of the features you want to lose or add for your system. Read More»

Windows 7 10-Second Boot

October 07, 2009 by Jason

Over a year ago, Microsoft revealed that it considered 15 seconds the ideal startup time for Windows 7 under laboratory conditions. While 15 seconds was half the time it took Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to boot, some critics pointed that the 15-second boot was a pipe dream. Well, Windows 7 did manage to provide its fair share of surprises when it comes down to boot performance, and the latest involves a startup that takes just 10 seconds. Just watch the video embedded bellow in order to get an idea of just what is involved in getting from a cold boot to a fully functional Windows 7 desktop in just 10 seconds.

“At (…) Intel Developer Forum, a company called Phoenix debuted new BIOS technology that allows Windows 7 to boot up from black screen to desktop in only 10 seconds. Called “Instant Boot BIOS,” the Phoenix BIOS uses new UEFI technology to power on several system devices at once instead of one-by-one. It also runs only those processes that are necessary to hand control over from BIOS to OS,” revealed Channel 10’s Sarah Perez (initially reported by LaptopMag).

The boot speed improvements over Windows Vista became clear very early on in the development process of Windows 7, via the now famous boot drag race. Read More»

Windows 7 11-Second Boot

September 19, 2009 by Jason

Windows 7’s evolution compared to Windows Vista is undeniable, and the lucky few that so far have had access to the RTM bits of the latest Windows client can confirm this. But fact of the matter is that even in Beta Build 7000 development stage, Windows 7 bested Vista, and the boot time performance drag race is an illustrative example in this regard. However, Windows 7 startup speeds manage to leave its precursor in the dust. Some of you might remember reading about the 11-second boot Windows 7 delivered in a demonstration courtesy of Ruston Panabaker, Microsoft’s principal program manager of strategic silicon partnering. (via PCMag and Beyond Binary)

Yes, Windows 7 booting in just 11 seconds. My first question was, what kind of computer was Panabaker running, for obvious, and geeky, reasons. So I went ahead, and shot an email to Microsoft asking for details about the hardware configuration of the 11-second Windows 7 boot machine. Here is the answer a company spokesperson provided me: “This was ran on a Quad-core 1.7 GHz Nehalem [Core i7] processor on a Calpella chipset, 2GB of memory, 80 GB Intel X25-M SSD (1st gen). In the set up, the log-in screen was turned off in the user control panel.”

However, the Microsoft representative noted that the 11-second boot represented just the startup time for Windows 7. “Note: BIOS post is in addition to this,” the company spokesperson added. Read More»

TOP 10 – August 2009 Popular Tips

September 01, 2009 by Jason

1. Windows 7 RTM Automated Installation Kit

2. Windows 7 XP Mode RC and Virtual PC RC

3. Install Windows 7 Alongside Windows Vista for a Dual Boot System

4. How to uninstall Windows 7

5. Windows 7 RTM Code Pack

6. Vista SP2 and XP SP3 Critical Updates

7. Free Registry Back Tool For All Windows

8. Make Firefox Faster With Your Old Firefox Profile

9. Windows 7 RTM Media Center

10. Windows 7 RTM Dell Drivers

Read More»

How to make Windows Vista boot faster

July 22, 2009 by Jason

The time it takes for your computer to start up and run has been massively improved under Windows Vista. One of the reasons older versions of Windows, such as Windows 95 and Windows 98, took so long to boot up was because those versions of Windows were running on top of another operating system MSDOS.

With Windows Vista this is no longer the case, so start-up times are a lot faster. If you have a brand new computer or a fresh installation of Windows Vista, it will take no time at all for your PC to start up, so you can begin using your favourite programs at once. Unfortunately, after a while, with the more programs you install and the more files you have on your PC, you may begin to notice that your computer takes longer and longer to start up. Before you know it, you’ll be able to get up, make a cup of tea and drink it while waiting for Windows Vista to load. When things get this bad, you know you have to do something about it.

We recently asked visitors to the pctipsbox.com website how long it took for their PCs to start. The results varied from less than a minute to over ten!

There are plenty of factors that could make your PC startup grind to a halt, so there are plenty of tweaks to try to get your PC starting up in a flash. It’s all very well listing these tweaks, but do they work? Read More»

Fix Ubuntu Bootloader

July 19, 2009 by Jason

Have you installed Windows and Ubuntu in dual boot? If yes, you might have installed Windows First and the Ubuntu, which is a good way of doing it.

In case you have already Installed Windows on your computer, then you have another good options to install Ubuntu inside windows without formatting hard disk using Wubi Installer.

But the problem is when you have Ubuntu installed already and then you install Windows on it. On installing Windows on top of Ubuntu, Windows removes the ubuntu boot-loader called grub and replaces it with windows boot loader. In this case, you will not be able to boot into Ubuntu.

To fix this issue, we will tell you how to install the ubuntu boot-loader called grub on top of windows boot-loader so that you can boot into windows or ubuntu whenever you like.

Fix:

For this you will need a Ubuntu live CD. Download the ubuntu live CD image from here and burn the CD. You can also order the ubuntu CDs by mail for free, but it will take a few weeks. Read More»

Windows 7 Interface Tweaks

February 23, 2009 by Jason

1. Right-click everything

At first glance Windows 7 bears a striking resemblance to Vista, but there’s an easy way to begin spotting the differences – just right-click things.

Right-click an empty part of the desktop, for instance, and you’ll find a menu entry to set your screen resolution. No need to go browsing through the display settings any more.

Right-click the Explorer icon on the taskbar for speedy access to common system folders: Documents, Pictures, the Windows folder, and more.

And if you don’t plan on using Internet Explorer then you probably won’t want its icon permanently displayed on the taskbar. Right-click the icon, select ‘Unpin this program from the taskbar’, then go install Firefox, instead.
Read More»

Top 10 – January 2009 Popular Tips

February 01, 2009 by Jason

1. Booting Windows XP with USB Flash Drive

2. How to Get another activation for Windows XP or Windows Vista

3. Download Windows 7 Beta right now

4. Resolve Occasional XP SP3 Stop Errors on Restart

5. Delete Index.dat files on Windows

6. Windows 7 Beta Language Interface Packs

7. Windows 7 Beta Download and Install Guide

8. TOP10 – December 2008 Popular Tips

9. How to Dual Boot Windows Vista And Windows 7

10. Ten Tips for Windows 7

Read More»

Booting Windows XP with USB Flash Drive

January 02, 2009 by Jason

Almost everyone who has worked with computers for any length of time at all has run into at least one situation in which a problem left a PC unbootable. What if you could return the machine to a bootable state just by inserting a USB flash drive though? Believe it or not, it is actually possible to install a bootable copy of Windows XP onto a flash drive and then boot a PC off of the flash drive. From there, you can use applications that you have installed on the flash drive (anti virus, anti spyware, disk repair, etc.) to fix the PC’s problem. In this article, I will show you how.

What’s the catch?

As with most cool new techniques, there are a few catches. For starters, not every PC is capable of booting from a USB flash drive. For the most part, computers manufactured within the last two years are generally able to boot from a flash drive. Older systems may require a BIOS update, or might not be able to boot from a flash drive at all.

Another catch is that not every flash drive will get the job done. The primary factors that limit your use of a particular flash drive are capacity and speed. Technically, speed isn’t really a limiting factor, but booting Windows will be painfully slow unless you use a flash drive that supports USB 2.0. Read More»

Install Windows XP On Windows Vista Without Formatting Hard Drive

December 08, 2008 by Jason

In this post we are going to share with you the experience we had while trying to Install Windows XP on new laptop which has Windows Vista and how we achieved it virtually.

I bought a HP Pavallion notebook which had Windows Vista, and first thing I wanted was to make it dual boot with Windows Vista and Windows XP. I studied a lot of articles on Internet for installing Windows XP on new laptop. So I did a spilt-streaming of SATA drivers and Windows XP onto a same CD using nLite tool. The CD was able to start the setup, but as soon as the system restarted between, all was gone, it neither booted again with XP setup nor it had Vista on boot-loader anymore.

Finally I was back to face this reality that these new pieces of hardware are not happy to run Windows XP because of driver issues and other compatibility problems. I was disappointed with this for a week or so, after which I realized that we can do a Virtual Install with a tool from Microsoft. This tool is called Virtual PC, so I will tell you how I Installed Windows XP on Windows Vista without any trouble. Read More»