Engineering Windows 7 for Faster Boot Performance
Posted 09/04/08 at 09:58:05 PM | by Mark Edward Soper
What can be done to help Windows 7 boot faster? According to Windows Fundamentals feature team leader Michael Fortin, blogging on the e7 (Engineering Windows 7) blog. a clean install isn't necessarily the way to go:
As the system [running Windows Vista SP1] arrived to us, the off-the-shelf configuration had a ~45 second boot time. Performing a clean install of Vista SP1 on the same system produced a consistent ~23 second boot time. Of course, being a clean install, there were many fewer processes, services and a slightly different set of drivers (mostly the versions were different). However, we were able to take the off-the-shelf configuration and optimize it to produce a consistent boot time of ~21 seconds, ~2 seconds faster than the clean install because some driver/BIOS changes could be made in the optimized configuration.
Fortin identifies a number of design goals for Windows 7 to help it achieve a high percentage of "very good" boot times (under 15 seconds), including:
- Reducing the number of system services
- Reducing the demand that system services make on CPU, disk, and memory resources
- Device and driver optimization
- Improving parallelism of driver initialization (enabling multiple drivers to be installed at the same time)
- Faster prefeching optimized for both traditional and SSD hard disks
Fortin's comments suggest that Microsoft is working very closely with system vendors to help assure that Windows 7 works well in typical preconfigured systems. Hopefully, Microsoft has learned a lot from the vast difference in performance between clean installs of Windows Vista and systems cluttered with OEM products not optimized for Vista.
Don't want to wait for Windows 7 to get faster boot times? Fortin also discusses analyzing systems with the Windows Performance Toolkit for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, available here.
How do you define fast boot time? When is a system "ready to go?" Hit the comment button and give us your thoughts.
Illustration adapted from Windows 7 logo courtesy of ArsTechnica.
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"Reducing the demand that
Submitted by 7hemy7h on Mon, 2008-11-24 08:24
"Reducing the demand that system services make on CPU, disk, and memory resources"
Thank God!!!
Submitted by BaggerX on Fri, 2008-09-05 10:08
What I want is a power-saving sleep mode that actually works well. I don't care if it boots slightly faster. I don't want to have to reboot! Make it so I don't need to reboot and then we don't have to worry about boot times. Mine boots up in about 30 seconds now. I really don't need it to be faster than that. I just need to reboot less often and have a reliable sleep mode that lets my system power down when I'm not using it, and then recover quickly when I need it again.
Submitted by bcweir on Fri, 2008-09-05 08:05
Preload the BIOS into a small amount of flash ram or a very small SSD... then boot from that instead of the ROM itself. Sort of like the oldstyle BIOS shadowing, but with a modern twist.
Submitted by jcollins on Fri, 2008-09-05 07:51
Boot time = power on until you can start using Windows. Just because Windows pops up doesn't mean you can actually do anything until the 50 different apps that want to be added to your task bar start up...
Submitted by zstadt on Fri, 2008-09-05 06:07
I'm excited for Windows 7 too; I just hope the price tag isn't as heavy as it is for Vista (I'm still running XP, and I'm proud of it).
Submitted by jey18 on Thu, 2008-09-04 22:54
I don't think they ment the OS optimized it, they just probably turned a few things off.
I'm excited for windows 7 personally, boot times really don't affect me much but less processes, less memory uses, paralell drivers seem interesting, and they are working closer with vendors = money imo.
In what ways can an OS
Submitted by sirphunkee on Thu, 2008-09-04 21:53
In what ways can an OS "optimize" a BIOS?
BIOS optimization and the OS
Submitted by Marcus_Soperus on Fri, 2008-09-05 07:37
What this means is that Microsoft is working with system and BIOS vendors to assure that systems built for Windows 7 have BIOS code that works very well with Windows 7. This isn't new: most motherboard and system vendors have released BIOS updates to improve hardware and software interaction for previous Windows versions. Hopefully, the first systems released with Windows 7 will have a well-matched combination of BIOS firmware, drivers, and applications all made for Windows 7, rather than the hodgepodge we saw with the early Windows Vista systems.
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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
Submitted by sirphunkee on Fri, 2008-09-05 12:53
Thanks Marc, I kinda thought/hoped that would be the answer. I understand optimizing the interaction between the two (from BIOS or O/S side), I just though M$ was claiming to directly alter BIOS settings/behavior.
I think booted means you are
Submitted by vistageek on Thu, 2008-09-04 20:00
I think booted means you are looking at your desktop. The boot starts when you hit the power button.
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