On Your Marks! Get Set! Boot!!

[Astrotoy7]

I was reading about speedy boot times enabled by SSDs in our news thread, and was wondering what the techies boot time experiences are. It will be interesting to see any per-hardware or per-OS differences.

 

If you want to put down your time here - here are the guidelines to somewhat standardise the time

 

>start timing from a power off position, when there is first a display on your screen. If you have one of those weird mainboards that takes 30secs for its fan to whir before it puts an image up, feel free to mention it. but don't include that bit in your time.

>make sure you stop/adjust for bootload selection times eg. my vista bootloader allows 20 seconds to decide what OS I want. Also make sure you stop/adjust for login times(if you have a secure login)

>with stop time, I used the point where my LAN enabled, and I could also open a folder without delay.

 

 

I just did mine and was not hugely surprised to see a difference between my resident OS.(I dont have Linux anymore, so it would be interesting to see what Linux freaks users get too..)

 

Specs first

OS1: Vista Ultimate x64

OS2: XP Pro SP2

Mainboard: Shuttle Propietary(AM2 in SN27P2)

CPU: AMD x2 6000+ (AM2 of course)

System HDD: Samsung SATA2 7200rpm 150GB

RAM: 4GB

GPU: 8800GTS 640MB

 

>>Results: (rounded to nearest second - just in case you dont have a stopwatch handy!)

Vista Ulti x64: 52 seconds

XP Pro: 41 seconds

 

nb. with both, I have minimal 'start on startup' options on, just driver service, antivirus proggie(avast) and networking app(network magic)

 

It'll be interesting to see what others have. Winner gets free Thai Massage from lovely Thai Lady/Boy/Ladyboy of their choice**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**prize redeemable in Thailand only. LFN will not cover travel and accomodation costs to Thailand.

[Ray Jones]

>start timing from a power off position, when there is first a display on your screen. If you have one of those weird mainboards that takes 30secs for its fan to whir before it puts an image up, feel free to mention it. but don't include that bit in your time.

>make sure you stop/adjust for bootload selection times eg. my vista bootloader allows 20 seconds to decide what OS I want. Also make sure you stop/adjust for login times(if you have a secure login)

>with stop time, I used the point where my LAN enabled, and I could also open a folder without delay.

Hmm. Interesting. ^^

 

However, I think we should stop POST and OS boot times separately, simply because the hardware will need exact the same time to POST no matter what OS will boot later. I think POST times should be clocked additionally from power on until the boot menu shows up. (These times could be added to OS boot times easily later.)

 

Result #1: time needed from power on to when the boot menu is available.

 

 

 

A good starting point to measure OS boot times should be when you hit enter in the boot menu and the OS boot actually starts. As for the issue of waiting user login screens this seems to be a bit difficult as most OSs tend to continue to load services and whatnot in the background.

 

I'd say one important way point is when the login prompt becomes available/usable. We'd have to disable any automatic login for but ... *shrug* we're of curious nature, aren't we.

 

Result #2: time needed from exiting boot menu (by pressing enter and choosing the desired OS) to user login screen becoming available.

 

 

 

Next step is to (temporarily) activate an automatic login and to automatically start some program (available OS independent). Ideally we should create a new and clean user with no other autostart entries (not via autostart folder nor registry settings) except that one program we hopefully all agree upon.

I suggest to use Firefox, with the start page set to http://www.google.com (at least temporarily). Feel free to suggest something better , however it is important for all to use the same software. The plan is to stop timing when Firefox stopped loading google's site.

 

Result #3: time needed from exiting boot menu until Firefox finished loading the http://www.google.com.

 

 

 

I also suggest to perform each test 3 time to get a good average value, this is also a good idea as it helps us to train some simple maths XD

[Astrotoy7]

Ray has given some excellent info for techies who may want to find out some important numbers for their system. If you are too lazy to do so and just want a general approximation of bootscreen>clickitability, follow my lazy lead

 

I was moreso looking forwad to find out who among us has startup down to a fine art(and maybe reveal some tips) and whose may be gigglesome

 

I'd say nearly ALL of our mainboards etc are different, and didnt think we really need to know each others POST times etc > a comparison based on the hardware factors is a difficult one due to the variance between what we all have.

 

But a comparison of our subjective experience of turning a pc on can be achieved easily, regardless of what bits we have.

 

start your engines !

 

mtfbwya

[Ray Jones]

Ray has given some excellent info for techies who may want to find out some important numbers for their system. If you are too lazy to do so and just want a general approximation of bootscreen>clickitability, follow my lazy lead

Good lord, Astro, not everything has to be totally tech-unsavvy-folk savvy. There is a reason why we got brains, you know. This is not about self-building a computer or space shuttle. It's about measuring times with a watch. Little kids can do that. And to put at least a little discipline into an experiment is nothing bad either.

 

I was just trying to introduce measuring points that deliver comparable numbers. And I don't think these were too "techy". And seriously I doubt that anyone who is not able/willing to perform these simple steps will be interested in checking those times.

 

 

I was moreso looking forwad to find out who among us has startup down to a fine art(and maybe reveal some tips) and whose may be gigglesome

A-ha. And these fine-art-of-booting times you want to measure by setting rather random start and stop points. However, anyone interested is literally fast "boot" times, here is my recipe: hibernation -- 15 seconds from boot menu to a fully fledged ready to rock system the way you left it the day before. Nowadays there is no need to boot/shutdown a system anymore.

 

I'd say nearly ALL of our mainboards etc are different, and didnt think we really need to know each others POST times etc > a comparison based on the hardware factors is a difficult one due to the variance between what we all have.

You know, start timing with a power on is useless then.

 

However, for those who are not interested, the power on to boot menu check can be easily left out.

 

But a comparison of our subjective experience of turning a pc on can be achieved easily, regardless of what bits we have.

But for that you would not need to clock the time. A simple "mine's booting pretty fast" or "mine is okay but too slow I think" is sufficient then.

 

However. Regarding their hardware, my Laptops boot all pretty fast.

 

 

 

Techy nos (result #2.5 values - boot menu to panel availability with auto login).

 

 

system/OS specs

 

- Pentium III @ 600MHz/192MiB RAM

-- Debian etch 2.6.18

 

- Athlon XP-M @ 1667MHz/768MiB RAM

-- Debian lenny 2.6.22

 

- Core2Duo @ 1667MHz/2Gib RAM

-- Debian sid 2.6.23

-- Windows MCE 2005

 

 

boot/shutdown times

 

Linux

- Pentium III -- 71 seconds / 16 seconds

- Athlon XP-M -- 59 seconds / 17 seconds

- Core2Duo -- 47 seconds / 15 seconds

 

Windows

- Core2Duo -- 39 seconds / 19 seconds

 

 

 

wakeup/hibernate times

 

Linux

- Pentium III -- 37 seconds / 32 seconds

- Athlon XP-M -- 22 seconds / 31 seconds

- Core2Duo -- 16 seconds / 27 seconds

 

Windows

- Core2Duo -- 17 seconds / 25 seconds

 

 

 

A notable difference is that XP is somewhat faster in the normal boot process, but while it keeps on loading at least another 10/15 seconds after the task panel is available, Linux has started all services already when passing the autologin and stops loading after the panels are there.

[Astrotoy7]

Nowadays there is no need to boot/shutdown a system anymore...

 

lolz, c'mon Ray - you should know the foibles of windows better than any of us!

 

Whilst it definitely happens much less in Vista, these infernal machines seems to sometimes lose their bearings and can only be restored to their senses by a restart.

 

In a home theater pc context, the effect hibernate can have on power state of things like tuners make it a bid hard to deploy - a sleep/standby is a bit safer in that instance.

 

mtfbwya

[Ray Jones]

lolz, c'mon Ray - you should know the foibles of windows better than any of us!

Huh? I hibernate my machines at home and at work since Windows 2000 and have not had any problems with that. Neither using virtual nor real machines. Last year I had a 1000-somewhat hours uptime on my virtual 2000 machine at work before the host system crashed due to a hardware failure and I have rebooted my XP at home after 4-5 months of hibernation only for the tests for this thread.

[stingerhs]

system specs:

 

CPU: AthlonX2 4600 @ 2.8GHz (overclocked)

RAM: 2GB DDR2-950 (timings at 4-4-5-10)

Mobo: Asus M2N-SLi (Nvidia 570)

Video: Radeon 2900 Pro

Boot Hard Drive: 2x WD Raptor 150GB 10000RPM (RAID 0)

OS: Windows Vista Ultimate x64

 

Post to OS: 10s

OS to login: 34s

login to webpage: 4s

Total time: 48s

 

on a side note, should Vista users include a sidenote explaining that they're using a thumbdrive for Speedboost?? it does have an effect on startup times, afterall.