Vista: Whatever happened to fast boot?

Discussions General
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Anyone else remember when Microsoft used to talk about making Windows Vista (or Longhorn, as it was then known) a fast-booting operating system. Fast, as in cold boots that were 50 percent faster than those possible with Windows XP?

Something obviously went awry.

As Computerworld is reporting, a number of Vista users are none too happy about Vista boot-up times. Some are questioning whether Microsoft is advocating that users just put Vista into sleep mode, as opposed to shutting down systems on a daily basis, to mask the sluggish boot up.

(And it’s not just boot up speeds that are troublesome. Vista shutdown is as slow as molasses, too, Computerworld is reporting users as saying. And app-loading times are nothing to write home about, either.)

Microsoft has been touting the sleep/hibernate modes as the preferred ways to “shut off” Vista systems. As former Windows Chief Jim Allchin blogged in December:

"Everyone knows that turning a TV off doesnt really turn it off. It is still available to receive the remote control signal, etc. so that it can come back on quickly. We wanted to emulate this for Windows Vista machines.

"To the degree possible, 'off' equals 'sleep' in Windows Vista, where the system state is saved in RAM. This creates the best balance of user experience for speed of resuming and lowest usage of power. However, if the PC is running on batteries even that minimal power usage could drain the batteries eventually. Remember the top goal here is to make sure that we can enable a fast on experience (like your cell phone) and a fast off experience, while still making sure that you don't lose your work when a Windows PC is turned off. To do this, we created a new approach that we call 'hybrid sleep state' that is the best of the sleep and hibernate modes (which existed separately in Windows XP)."

From the reaction on the Vista support forums, it doesn’t seem like users are cottoning to Microsoft’s sleep/hibernate Vista settings.

What’s your take? Does Microsoft need to rethink its Windows power-management defaults with Windows Seven and beyond?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=378

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Vista slower than XP at start-up, shutdown, gripe users

Au contraire, says Microsoft; Vista should be faster for most

April 09, 2007 (Computerworld) – Windows Vista users are complaining on Microsoft Corp.'s support forums about long start-up, shutdown and application load times compared with Windows XP.

The users, who sound pro-Vista for the most part, have vented about a variety of speed issues on Microsoft’s Performance & Maintenance forum. “I have XP and Vista running side-by-side [but] I twiddle my thumbs waiting for certain apps to load up on the Vista machine while the load is instantaneous on the older XP machine,” wrote a user identified as William. “I’ve tweaked it as best as I could with the info available and I am still very disappointed.”

Wrote another user, Kris: “Recently I upgraded from XP to Vista [Home] Premium. When I start the laptop and I see the last BIOS info and Vista starts loading, then I have to wait a full 6 (six!) minutes before I can open my first application (for example Outlook or IE or whatever).”

Some accepted the slower speeds as the price of admission for getting the latest and greatest from Microsoft. Said Jon: “XP is undoubtedly quicker than Vista. I don’t think there will be a way around that. You’ll never get extra functionality, without some performance cost, assuming the same hardware.”

Suggestions from other users, including some tagged as Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, ranged from adding more RAM to running Vista’s Performance Information and Tools control panel to diagnosing possible problems. Replies to such messages, however, typically claimed 2GB or more of memory, and said no problems were reported by the operating system.

Start-up and shutdown times were particularly grating to some users. “Takes about 10 minutes to boot, then 5 minutes after login before you can use it,” said user Bengt. “If no improvement I have promised my family to return to XP. But I want Vista!”

One user had a worse tale to tell. Martin Racette wanted to know if it was normal that Vista took more than an hour to shut down and to restart.

Others, at least, kept a sense of humor. “I’ve compared it to a Commodore 64 loading programs from tape, but I think the Commodore was faster,” said Steve Franks. “I’m currently writing this on my other PC, because nothing has happened on my Vista machine for about 15 minutes.”

Users, software reviewers and some analysts have dinged Vista for its high-powered hardware requirements, and a lawsuit filed last week took that very tack.

More here.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/art … rc=hm_list

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Martin Racette wanted to know if it was normal that Vista took more than an hour to shut down and to restart.

I think he simply installed Vista on a very, very, very, very, very, very ancient system.

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try vistabootpro

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agreed, either vistabootpro or vlite…
but those are just extra work for the slightly more knowledgeable techies…

I just hate those who ask for notebook with pre-installed vista downgrade to XP Pro, that’z just extra work! Can’t they just get use to it? damnit!

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i wasnt happy for vista business suite, now after weeks of vista ultimate, i think i can slowly accept it, but with one caveat, disable UAC XD

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The UAC is actually pretty nifty really, too bad it doesn’t really coexist nicely with OpenVPN, there are some issues :frowning: