Why is my windoze so damned SLOW?

[Aloone_Jonez]

Windoze XP does boot fast, but I can only laugh at the idea it's because of any special file arrangement or such. Just look at file table using any defragmenter and you'll notice that the windoze partition has thousands of fragmented files after a couple of days since the last defragmentation - even though it was run with optimizations such as placing the files in order of last access.

It depends on the file system, I've had my 40GB hard drive for over a year now and it still doesn't need defragmenting and it's 35% full, my FAT32 on the other hand is 60GB patition (the rest is Linux) on an 80GB hard drive is only 15% full and it needs defragmenting quite often.

I would imagine that the system files required to boot are in boot order starting from the boot sector onwards and for this reason they're only moved when a major change is made to the configuration When this happens Windows rearranges them in correct the boot order after a few boots, this is why Windows took a lot longer to boot after I installed SP2 but it speeded up after successive boots. Oh and these Windows XP's boot speed optimisations don't work with FAT32 file systems because they rely on special features that NTFS has and FAT32 simply doesn't have.

On the other hand, the boot-up time on Linux depends on what distro, software and services you use. Many "regular" distros seem to come with a huge load of unneccessary stuff to make sure they run on as many systems as possible, as well as a kernel that has support for everything. My Suse 9.3 takes maybe a minute to boot up, when I tried Gentoo, it took about as long as windoze to get to the point where the login screen appears. I didn't have KDE load automatically so I can't say for sure but judging by the time Suse takes to get to the same point where Gentoo stops in text mode, it's pretty fast. Too bad I couldn't get anything else working properly on Gentoo so I switched back to Suse.

This is the problem with comparing Windows to Linux. Windows is Windows and Linux is just a kernel. One Linux distrobution can be better (or worse) than another.

[FIREFOX4ME]

I think that everybody should use Linux, regardless of their needs.  Because I am the supreme ruler of the universe and I don't think anybody should be allowed the use Windows.  Neophytes.

[Simon]

Alot of people use Windows due to Buissness reasons, but want to use Linux/Mac/Etc. Also, you are giving Linux a bad name.

[=DMW=Zero]

Easy !!!

Couse Windows Sucks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[adiment]

e7ement,
You're the first person I've heard say that, have you run Windows XP and 2000 on the same hardware before?

Yeah. I'm talking about xp on a fresh install with no tweaks. Sometimes takes as much as 2 minutes, even when you see the desktop you can't do anything for more than 30 seconds.

after you mess with registsy, services, and msconig you can make XP boot very fast.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Yes but I've found it slow after a major reconfigureation like installing SP2 and a fresh intallation would probably be worse. But after a few boots or even a defrag I've found it graduly speeds up. I can't remember the boot speed when I fist bought my machine but it was faster than my old p200 so I wouldn'tve noticed.

[WMD]

For bootup, XP will show you the desktop first after you log in.  This appears fast, but everything else is still starting so you can't use it.  2000 waits a bit before showing you the desktop, and it's usable sooner.

[Aloone_Jonez]

That's why I included the amount of time it took before the desktop became usable, when I tested Windows XP and Vector Linux, in this thread  

Don't worry Vector Linux won the race, I don't think Redhad would win though.

[piratePenguin]

/me sings "my (Slackware) system boots faster than Aloones supper-fast XP system"

[Aloone_Jonez]

Ok if you're going to stoop this low I'll come and join you.
Vector Linux Rules!
Slackware rules!

Lol Windows XP boots faster than Redhat.

[piratePenguin]

Slackware and Vector Linux boot faster than Windows XP, and I'm pretty damn sure they're not the only GNU/Linux distros that do.
What about FreeBSD, anyone?

[Aloone_Jonez]

I would imagine Gento Linux would kick, Vector Linux, Windows XP, and slackware into orbit.

[piratePenguin]

So would I.

I built two (Beyond,) Linux From Scratch systems (compile _everything_ from scratch (well ya just follow the instructions in the (e)book), quite an experience), and I remember I was amazed at how fast it booted. But I didn't have feck all installed.

I don't think I've built my last LFS system yet.

[toadlife]

Since we're on the topic a boot speeds, I'm gonna do a test. My FreeBSD 5-Stable vs WinXP SP2. I'll see how long it takes, from power up to get to the desktop, and load Firefox 1.03. When the google logo appears in Firefox, I'll stop the timer.

I'll knock of three of four seconds from my FreeBSD boot time because I have to log in and so 'startx' after booting.

[toadlife]

My unscientific boot speed comparison:

FreeBSD 5-Stable/KDE 3.4 - 1:39.13
Windows XP SP2 - 1:26.02


Things to be aware of:

The FreeBSd box required me to login to the console and sype startx to get to the desktop. I stopped the timer when the login screen started up, and started it back up when I entered the 'startx' command.

The FreeBSD machines boots of of a 5400RPM ATA100 drive. The WindowsXP machine boots off of a 7200RPM ATA133 drive

The WindowsXP machine has to load up Avast Antivirus and Microsoft Antispyware at startup. The FreeBSD machine doesn't.

In a few days I will be reloading both systems onto the same ATA133 7200RPM drive. I just got a 3Ware Escalade 7000 RAID controller, and am waiting for a dvd burner to arrive, so I can offload all of my data first. I'll do the same test agian when both systems are booting of the same drive.

Even with all of those things above that make the test uneven, I still think if everything were totally square, hardware wise, XP would still be faster to boot. Take off the Virus software and antispyware software, and XP would only increase it's lead. Sure, you can compare XP to a Linux/BSd distro with some featureless Window manager, but that's not very fair.