[Razer]

In this day and age we usually have multiple cores in our processors, or at least more than one logical processor. When booting XP and Vista don't use all the cores to boot, neither do they use all the RAM you have installed, so lets tell it to!

Open MSConfig and click the Boot tab. Click the "Advanced Options..." option and make a few changes. The Max processors option should be at the amount of cores you have and the Max Memory to the max you have installed in your machine. Note on XP these options appear as Maxproc and Maxmem (I think) so set these to max and let the OS use it all to boot!

I'm waiting for someone to burst my bubble now and tell me you lot already know or this is bad because *insert random problem here* but it's a handy tip I thought I would share =D

[pete21]

also deleting system FONTS speeds up bootup time (not all font leave at least 5)

[KanoakaVirus]

Originally Posted by pete21

also deleting system FONTS speeds up bootup time (not all font leave at least 5)

That's a good tip, it can also be applied to programs such as PS and Gimp to speed start up.

[Razer]

Right, lets roll in the tips for speeding up the boot!

Using "Hibernate" is a great feature for starting up more quickly, takes longer to shut down but you're not using the computer then so it makes no difference! Can halve boot times! (Hold Shift on the XP shutdown menu, appears over Standby)

Removing startup items that are useless (Quicktime anyone?) can reduce the logon and boot times. Look on sites to see what you can kill without any bad effects!

[KanoakaVirus]

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/134844...windows_start/

[Razer]

Haha, he was asleep! There are a good few points.

I recently read a post on this very forum which said for the people who own Vista Enterprise and Ultimate, they can change their disk to a "Dynamic Hard Drive" Using various files as partitions to increase boot time significantly. Do read the thread called Pro's/Con's of a Dynamic Hard Drive! (General Hardware I think!)