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Windows loves to doodle in the pagefile all day long, whether you have 1 byte of memory free or 3GB free. Why? Who knows?
Disabling the pagefile just means that Windows runs everything in memory and if you run out of memory you're dead, since you have no pagefile to swap things out to.
In any case, this definitely isn't the cause of the 8min boot time, but it's not a bad idea to do on every system.
Well I attempted to repair the installation and this did not help the boot time. After this I uninstalled Avast and Comodo Pro and it sped up some. But then I tried to install my nForce IDE controller and on reboot it blue screened with an NT Stop error. Repaired the install one more time and downloaded some updates and video drivers prior to installing the nForce IDE and it worked.
After that I downloaded TweakAll and TweakUI and made some changes to the way Windows looks at my drives. Also added /BOOTLOG to the boot.ini command line so a bootlog is written on every boot now. I cleaned the registry and defragged the drives using manual defragmentation. This means that Diskkeeper will force a chkdsk on the next boot and will then run it's defrag prior to Windows starting up. The drives are pristine right now with blue (good) all across the volumes. No bad sectors, no bad indices, no bad security descriptors. Drives appear to be in tip top shape.
After examining ntbtlog.txt it appears there are about 8 to 9 drivers that do not load and yet it continually tried to load them over and over and over. Did not find any that failed to load which may indicate a problem so I'm not sure what is going on.
Bootup is not extremely fast now but it is better than before with the time having been reduced to about 3 min to boot and 1 to become responsive. I purchased a 1.44 3.5" drive so I can use a SATA driver disk during my next install and I'm going to place XP on my SATA drive. I've copied my profile over to a backup folder on another SATA drive and did a folder diff with WinMerge. ntuser.dat and ntuser.dat.log are missing b/c they are locked and cannot be copied.
Right now I'm attempting to copy Windows to my SATA and then boot from the Windows CD after I unplug my existing IDE XP boot drive. Then I will use my SATA disk so setup can see my SATA and will do the following:
fixboot
fixmbr
bootcfg /add
This will make my SATA bootable. After this I will boot from my SATA and then copy ntuser.dat to my profile backup folder on my SATA. Then I will boot from my IDE drive one last time and copy my complete profile with ntuser.dat and ntuser.dat.log to Documents and Settings on my SATA drive. This should leave me with a near perfect image of my profile from my IDE boot drive. All that is left now is to boot from my SATA and then copy anything I want from my old IDE to my SATA and then finally remove my IDE drive permanently. My floppy drive will then go into the bay that my IDE drive was in and everything should be ok.
As of right now I have not lost any profile information, save games, or anything important. I did have to d/l all the Windows updates along with SP2 and SP3 but thats about it.
Hopefully this should fix everything and the SATA should boot much faster.
Wow, it almost sounds like it would have been faster just to do a new install of XP and reinstall all your programs, rather than trying to copy the existing XP to a new drive... :p
Although, if you just used Ghost to create an image of the old drive, then copied that image to the new drive, it probably would have been a lot less hassle.
Did you try just removing the 8 or 9 drivers that keep failing to load?
The basic problem is I need my XP on my SATA but my SATA has been in use for quite some time so I can't just image C: and move it to E: (my SATA). What I'm doing is fooling setup so it sees a windows install on my E: (b/c I have XP upgrade) and then I can make the drive bootable as if my previous boot info got corrupted. Setup has no idea that the boot info was never there and will allow me to make the drive bootable from the recovery console.
The biggest problem is ntuser.dat is locked which means I have to play hot potato with the file so I can finally get it from where it is on C: to where it should be on E:. This is why I must boot from SATA, copy it from C: to E: profile backup (can't copy to where it should be on E: b/c the file will be locked on E:), and finally boot from IDE and copy from E: profile backup to where it should be on E: (since now ntuser.dat on E: will be unlocked).
And I have to copy my C: drive to E: so that all registry refs to C: are correct. As soon as I unplug my C: IDE drive Windows will see the boot on my current E: and rename it to C: which means my current registry refs to C: will still be correct. Then I will have to manually replace references to E: in the registry and replace them with C:. I might be able to d/l a third party reg edit that has a global search and replace unlike the one MS provides.
Pain in the arse but it will work.
I still don't see why you can't image your C: drive and move it to your SATA drive?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubba
If I understand you correctly, you're saying you have data on the SATA drive currently that Windows sees as E: and you need windows to keep seeing it as E:?
Just use Partition Magic to shrink the E: drive and make a new Primary Partition at the beginning on the drive for your new C: drive. Restore your image there.
Which drive is D: on? If it's on the IDE, image that one too...
Or if you really need to, you can right-click on My Computer & click Manage, then click on Disk Management. It'll show you all your partitions. You can right-click on any of them and click Change Drive Letter & Paths...
No the drive will be seen as C:. But changing the drive letter does nothing to fix registry entries that currently exist. It will change the letter but it will also break every program you have that relies on the old drive letter.
I could use Partition Magic as you have stated and it does sound like it would save me some pain.
All of this b/c originally XP did not come with SATA drivers so the setup program cannot see any SATAs without inserting a floppy that has the drivers on it.
I do have Vista on the shelf over here......nah.....I'd rather fight with XP for sure.
Hooya!Quote:
I do have Vista on the shelf over here......nah.....I'd rather fight with XP for sure.
Do you have relatively new hardware? If so, I don't think you'd have a lot of problems with Vista.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubba
I was scared about putting Vista on my new PC, but after using it for over half a year, it works pretty damn good. Nowhere near as annoying as those Crapintosh commercials make it sound. And with Vista you don't need a floppy drive to load drivers during install (it's about damn time!).
Another thing you can use for the drive letters is the subst command.
That way you can have the SATA drive as C: and also create a phony E: drive that just points to C:
I agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by cpjust
If you have Vista, give it a shot. It's not worse than XP anymore (although not necessarily better), but it sure as heck is overpriced.
Vista does have a few advantages over XP, as well, as noted, especially the installation part.
I already installed Vista once and it sucked really bad on my machine. But I did get everything working in XP although not exactly how I described it. The registry editing was not as simple since on one boot XP changed E: to C: and C: to E: but then on the next boot kept them the same as before. I had to repair the fake install on E: and make sure that everything worked. Then I updated the install to SP3 and finally removed my IDE drive. Thankfully I have no more IDE drives on my machine.
Boot time is now about 1 to 1.5 min with responsiveness as soon as I get into the shell.
Is that good?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubba
How long did it take before this slowdown happened?
Hmm... that's excellent, I'm sure. I take around 2-3 minutes. Plus around 15 seconds after shell pops up.
Mine takes < 20 seconds to get to the login screen, then 10-20 seconds for Yahoo, NIS & the rest of the desktop to load... Unfortunately my machine also cost almost $2000. :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Mario F.
RAID 0 & 5 really make a hell of a difference though.
Oh?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubba
What happened then?
I hope you installed SP1?