How to Speedup Slow Startup Times in Windows 7

Its an excellent article on speeding up boot-times in windows 7 by Sandro Villinger. Most of such articles do not go further than msconfig.exe, but this is not like that. Like this article talks about “MainPathBootTime” Smile. Windows 7 is a fast beast, especially when it comes to its startup process which was optimized dramatically compared to Windows Vista. No wonder, as Microsoft has a dedicated team focusing strictly on startup performance.

On a system with one- to two-year-old hardware, Windows 7 usually takes only 20 to 40 seconds to boot up. Even the performance-wise challenged netbooks rarely need more than a minute to be ready for work! Certainly, boot times vary significantly from one computer to another. This is nothing new. But if Windows 7 clients need way longer – and we’re talking way over one or two minutes – then you’re looking at a resource hog.

So what could be causing the problem?
* You just installed a new driver, which hasn’t been WHQL-certified and delays the boot up process. It could be a simple driver bug!
* You installed a piece of resource-intense software that initializes a process or a service during startup.
* You updated existing software or Windows 7 itself. Yes, it’s not unheard of that some updates cause a significant boot delay.

Or its may be a combination of all three causes. In any case, something is clearly taking up too much resources during startup time. To get to the bottom of the mystery, you need to follow a couple of step-by-step instructions to find and resolve the issue. Ready? Here’s how!

Find Out Exactly How Long Windows 7 Needs to Start Up:
Let’s start off by finding out the exact time the Windows 7 client needs to start up. And guess what, no stopwatch is required! Windows 7’s very own Event Viewer does the trick. In the following four steps you learn to measure both the raw boot time and the real life boot time (and what both mean).

Disable Auto Reboot on Windows Updates

When you updates via Windows Update manually or scheduled Automatic Updates automatically, system will auto-restart or auto-reboot in order to apply all the updates. Its almost same in Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP, after installing downloaded. Though Windows 7 has added option to allow users to postpone or delay the restart, the computer will still automatically restart sometime later, if the updates required system to be rebooted to finish the installation.

After the installing of updates completed which requires to restart Windows, system will notify users that it needs to restart, and if there is no response from user in 5 minutes, Windows will automatically reboot the computer, even though user is logged on, and has programs running or documents opened. This result to lost any unsaved data, such as files, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and downloads or processes such as backup or defragmentation that not yet finished will be terminated.

We can prevent Windows from automatically restart. Just use the this trick to disable the auto restart after installing Windows Updates feature. Follow these steps :

~Goto Start button and open Run, and type gpedit.msc to open Group Policy Editor.

~In Local Group Policy Editor, navigate to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update.

~Double click on No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations.

~Select Enabled radio button and click OK.

~Close GPEDIT (Local Group Policy Editor).

You can also add this directly in registry, in case of Windows 7, Vista and XP Home edition which does not have a Group Policy Editor.

~In Run type regedit to open Registry Editor.

~Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

If the key does not exist, create new key and name accordingly.

~Change the NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers DWORD (32-bit) Value to 1 to disallow auto-reboot. By default, the value is 0 which allow auto-reboot.
If the value does not exist, create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value and name accordingly.

~Close Registry Editor.

After all above settings, Automatic Updates will wait for the computer to be restarted by any user, instead of causing the computer to restart automatically to complete a scheduled installation.

Rearm Count Reset Tools for use Windows 7 Forever

You can use your Windows 7 forever with rearm feature. Windows 7 has a Rearm feature which allows you to use it for next 30 days in evaluation mode but this can be done 3 times at max. So, you can only run it for 120 days maximum without activating using legitimate key or crack it. But there some tools that can automate Windows 7 Rearm indefinitely without crack and use it forever. The Rearm Count Reset Tools makes this procedure somehow easy as it includes minimal manual steps and everything is automated.

With this you can can use Windows 7 forever without cracking. By default, each Rearm count is reduced by one when you perform a Rearming operation but what does these tools do is to reset rearm count to 4 always. They RearmWindows 7 automatically on 29th or 30th Day of every month.

There are three tools namely InfiniteRearm4, Windows7Rearm Forever and Windows 7 Rearm Task developed by some clever users hackers at MDL Forum.
All these tools come with an instruction file for how to do reset Windows 7 Rearm count.

InfiniteRearm4 v1.9: Reset Windows 7 Rearm Count
Windows 7 Rearm Forever 2.0: Rearm Count Reset tools
Windows 7 RearmTask4 v2.1: Rearm Count Reset tools

It has following common steps:

1. Press F8 after POST to display the Advanced Boot Options
2. Select Repair your Computer
3. Select the keyboard input method
4. Enter the Windows Login details
5. Note on which drive the OS is installed below Choose Recovery Option
6. Click on Command Prompt
7. Type driveletter:reset (example C:reset or D:reset) and press Enter
8. Click on Restart button
9. After logon, ignore the watermark & wait for a while till a Message Box is displayed.

Free Download Link for Reset Rearm Count Tools :

InfiniteRearm4 v1.9
Windows 32-bit/64-bit.
Windows 7 Rearm Forever 2.0
Windows 32-bit/64-bit.
Windows7 RearmTask4 v2.1
Windows 32-bit/64-bit.
InfiniteRearm4 v1.9
Windows 32-bit/64-bit.