If your long-serving computer keeps booting up at a slower speed, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to buy a new one. How you can more than double the boot-up speed?
It’s usually only a matter of time before the boot-up speed of a Windows computer starts dropping.
This often happens because of a magnetic hard drive that is gradually getting filled up. Such a hard drive may contain several tools of varying degrees of usefulness, which automatically boot up along with the operating system. This is combined with the everincreasing fragmentation of the system files.
Several versions of Windows have automatically been taking care of the defragmentation of the hard drive. The system launches an optimisation process whenever you don’t use the PC for a while, but leave it running. Windows doesn’t just merge individual files so that they will be loaded quicker. The operating system also moves important system files to the edge of the hard drive.
Pre-fetching As A System Booster
Thanks to this pre-fetching feature, Windows loads important files in the RAM during the boot-up procedure. This is done before the files are needed. However, if you want to optimise the boot-up time, you will have to tell Windows which files it is supposed to mark as ‘important’. This article explains how to do this using the Xbootmgr Microsoft tool.
Xbootmgr optimises the boot routine of Windows in a twofold manner: On the one hand, the tool automatically defragments the boot files and re-positions them. On the other hand, you can also run an extensive optimisation procedure, in which Xbootmgr restarts the system several times in order to analyse it. The tool then uses this data to determine the sequence in which the files that are required during start-up should be saved on the hard drive.
Xbootmgr can be found in the Windows Performance Toolkit, which is part of the official software development kit (SDK). However, you don’t have to install the entire SDK. All you have to do is select the required options during the set-up procedure.
The results produced by Xbootmgr vary depending on the extent to which Windows has already optimised your PC automatically. PCs with a magnetic disk can boot up again in 30 seconds – This refers to the period of time between activation and the point at which you can start working using the PC. However, Xbootmgr ends up saving a lot of time even if the process takes a minute or more: For example, our long-serving test computer used to boot up in 140 seconds, and it can now get started in just 69 seconds.
Prepare System Optimisation
First of all, you should take a look at the registration database and find out whether pre-fetching has been activated, and whether the associated Windows service is running. To do so, press [Windows] + [R] and enter ‘regedit’. Now, when you’re within the registry, you should navigate to the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\MemoryManagement\PrefetchParameters” key. Now, double-click the “EnablePrefetcher” DWORD value in the right half of the window, and change it to ‘3’. Repeat this procedure for “EnableSuperfetch”.
At this point, you should check whether the “Superfetch” Windows service has been activated. To do so, press [Windows] + [R] again and enter ‘services.msc’. The system will now generate a query associated with “User account controls”, after which the “Services” window will open. Scroll all the way up to the “Superfetch” entry and double-click it. The “Properties of superfetch” will then be opened. Take a look at the “General” tab, and ensure that the “Automatic” entry has been selected under “Start-up type”. Furthermore, “Is being executed” must be present behind “Service status”. Otherwise, click the “Start” option. Reboot your PC if you have made a change.
Download Windows SDK
You will need the software development kit corresponding to your Windows operating system in order to be able to install the Windows Performance Toolkit and Xbootmgr. Those who are using Windows 10 can find the software development kit at https://developer.microsoft.com/en-en/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk, while those who are using Windows 7 and 8 can find the corresponding software development kit at https://developer.microsoft.com/en-en/windows/downloads/windows-8-sdk. In both cases, you will receive a one-MByte downloader. Double-click it to call up the installation assistant. Now, keep clicking “Next” until you reach the licence conditions. After you acknowledge the conditions, the “Select the features you want to install” dialogue will be opened. Untick all the options except “Windows Performance Toolkit”. When you click “Install” the set-up programme will download all the required files and install them on your PC.
Measure The Exact Start Time
Xbootmgr is a powerful tool that creates extensive protocols associated with the bootup times of your computer. You must first use Explorer to manually create the folder in which these protocols are to be saved. In our example, we created the “temp” folder on the “C:” drive. We then created the sub-folders “Before” and “After”.
In order to ensure that Xbootmgr can measure the exact start time, you should temporarily activate the automatic Windows login facility. To do so, press [Windows] + [R] and enter ‘netplwiz’. In the new window, untick the “Users must enter username and password” option. Confirm your action with “OK”, type in your username and enter your password twice.
We now go to the optimisation of the PC’s start-up procedure. In general, this is done in three steps: First, you use Xbootmgr to measure the unoptimised boot-up time, so that you will be able to compare the values and find out the extent to which Windows has been sped up. Windows then adjusts the pre-fetching procedure. Finally, a test is run on the optimised system to find out how much time has been saved.
Speed Up The Windows Start Up Procedure
Xbootmgr – which is central to the measurement of the start-up procedure – doesn’t have a graphical user interface, so it’s not particularly user-friendly: You have to control it using a command prompt window with administrator rights. The protocols created by the tool can subsequently be opened and analysed in the Windows Performance Analyzer. To launch Xbootmgr under Windows 10, right-click the start symbol at the bottom left and select the >>Command prompt (administrator)<< option. Under Windows 7, select >>Start | All programmes | Accessories<< and right-click >>Command Prompt<<. Select the >>Run as administrator<< option. In both cases, confirm the query generated by User Account Control with ‘Yes’.
Stop what you’re doing with the PC and save all the files that are open. Now, enter the command ‘xbootmgr –trace boot –resultPath C:\temp\Before’. Your PC will then re-boot on its own (without generating any queries) after a pause of a few seconds. The items behind the programme names specify what Xbootmgr is supposed to do: ‘-trace boot’ ensures that the tool measures the boot routine. ‘-resultPath’ and the folder name to the right of it specify the directory in which Xbootmgr is supposed to save the protocol file.
After Windows has been restarted, the system automatically opens a little window with a 120-second countdown. Instead of clicking “Finish”, you should wait until the window closes automatically. Do not open any other programmes, as doing so can affect the measurement. After the entire measurement procedure has been completed, you will be able to find the protocol file in the “C:\temp\Before” folder. It has the extension “.ETL”. Now, launch Windows Explorer, navigate to the “C:\temp\Before” folder and open the ETL file in the Windows Performance Analyzer by double-clicking it.
Analyse Measurements In Detail
Click the little triangle in front of “Other”, and then double-click “Boot Phases”. The upper part lists the various boot phases that Windows goes through during the start-up procedure.
Each phase is depicted as a coloured bar. The longer the bar, the longer the corresponding phase. The table underneath this section displays the values in detail. The point of intersection between the “Post Boot” row and the “End Time (s)” column displays the total duration of the boot routine. For example, the test computer took a little more than 143 seconds to get through the five boot phases.
Xbootmgr subsequently restarts your PC a total of six times. You will not be able to use your PC for other purposes during this time. User Account Control asks for a confirmation after each start-up procedure. If that’s too annoying, you can simply deactivate the protective mechanism for the measurements: To do so, right-click the start symbol, open the “Control panel” and go to “User Accounts”. Access the “User Accounts” section once again in the following window. Select “Change User Account Control settings” and drag the regulator to the bottom. Remember the regulator’s setting, so that you will be able to move it back to its original position after the optimisation procedure has been completed.
Optimise Start Up
To carry out the optimisation procedure, open another command prompt window with administrator rights and enter the command ‘xbootmgr –trace boot –prepSystem –verboseReadyBoot –resultPath C:\temp’. “-prepSystem” and “-verboseReadyBoot” move the boot files of Windows to the edge of the hard drive and optimise the pre-fetching procedure. The computer will once again be restarted after the command has been dispatched. Wait until Xbootmgr has run the optimisation procedure a total of six times.
After the first re-starting procedure, the kernel analyses your computer’s start-up behaviour. During the second start-up procedure, the boot files are defragmented and moved to the edge of the hard drive. The subsequent start-up procedures serve to optimise the boot sequence. The whole procedure usually takes one to two hours. Do not interrupt this process, even if you feel like the system hasn’t done anything for an eternity after throwing up the message “Preparing system...”. The first passes are the ones that take a relatively long time.
After the computer has been optimised, you should re-measure the time that Windows takes to boot up. To do so, open another command prompt window with admin-rights and enter the command ‘xbootmgr –trace boot –resultPath C:\temp\After’. The measurement result will thus be saved in the sub-folder “After”. As soon as the measurement has been taken, double-click the new ETL file and check how much time the system now needed to boot up. Our test computer started booting up in 69 seconds. The procedure can be sped up even further by cleaning up autostarts and installing an SSD.
Finally, if you have, as recommended, deactivated User Account Control and activated the automatic login facility for Windows, you shouldn’t forget to undo these actions.
Optimising autostarts
One problem that Xbootmgr cannot solve relates to the several autostarts that pile up over time. This problem can be solved using a separate tool, such as Microsoft’s free Autoruns tool. This tool lists all the autostart entries, and can be used to deactivate them.
> Launch the Autoruns tool with administrator rights and hide all the entries that originate from Microsoft. To do so, access the “Options” and tick “Hide Microsoft Entries”.
> Switch over to the “Logons” tab and untick the unnecessary entries. Right-click the corresponding programmes if you’re not sure about their purpose, and select the “Search Online...” option. After you have deactivated all the autostart entries that are no longer required, close the programme and restart your computer.
Migrating to an SSD
If you still believe your computer isn’t booting up quickly enough, you should migrate Windows to an SSD and use it as the boot medium.
>The EaseUS Partition Master Professional software features an easy-to-use wizard, which you can use to copy your Windows operating system onto an SSD. If you have a notebook, you should use a USB-SATA adapter, which can be obtained for less than 10 euros. You can directly connect the SSD to the PC’s SATA port.
> In EaseUS Partition Master Professional, you can start the migration procedure using the “Migrate OS to SSD/HDD” point. Follow the wizard’s instructions and replace your computer’s old hard drive with the new SSD. After Xbootmgr and Autoruns had been used to optimise the procedure and the SSD migration process had been completed, our test computer booted up in just 36 seconds.