[ The PC Guide | System Optimization and Enhancement Guide | System Optimizations and Enhancements | Enhance and Streamline the Boot Process ]

Speed Up the Boot Process

There are a few tricks that you can employ to speed up the boot process. These are all based on tweaking BIOS settings that control what happens when the PC is booted up. Using these enhancements can cut the time for the BIOS portion of the boot process in half (if not by more):

• Enable the "Quick Boot" Feature: Many newer PCs have a special BIOS setting, usually called "Quick Boot" or "Quick Power On Self Test" that can be enabled to make the boot take less time. This setting is described in more detail here. Try enabling this setting; this will cause the BIOS skips some of the normal test routines that it performs at boot time, speeding up the boot process.

Warning: Enabling this setting turns off some of the power-on tests that the BIOS normally performs, which slightly increases the chances of a hardware problem not being detected at boot time.

• Remove the Boot Delay Setting: Some PCs have a BIOS setting that you can use to intentionally delay the boot-up of the PC by several seconds. This setting is often called "Boot Delay" or "Power-on Delay". This can be useful when the BIOS is booting too quickly, causing hard disk drives to be booted before they are ready. However, it also slows the boot process down, so make sure that it is only enabled if it is needed.
• Disable Floppy Drive Seek: Most PCs have a BIOS setting to disable floppy drive seeking, which is the short access the BIOS makes to the floppy disk just before it boots the system. This seek (unless disabled) is performed regardless of whether the system is being booted from the hard disk or floppy disk. Disabling the seek speeds up the boot process by a couple of seconds. This doesn't really have any negative impact on the system, although if you are having problems with your floppy drive you will probably want to re-enable the seek as this makes troubleshooting some types of problems easier.

Next: Eliminate the "Ticking" Sound During Bootup

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