Make Windows XP boot faster with Bootvis

Martin Brinkmann
Jun 25, 2006
Updated • May 6, 2013
Windows, Windows XP
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7

Many of you may know the discontinued freeware Microsoft Bootvis. Here is a short explanation for those who do not. Bootvis analyses the boot process and measures the startup time from cold boot, hibernate and standby. After analyzing the startup process it will optimize it so that boot times of one or more minutes are a thing of the past. It's a great tool if you have a computer that is slow booting into your operating system of choice.

The design goals for Windows XP on a typical consumer PC are:

  • Boot to a useable state in a total of 30 seconds
  • Resume from Hibernate (S4) in a total of 20 seconds
  • Resume from Standby (S3) in a total of 5 seconds

It needs to be noted that Bootvis is no longer officially supported or in development by Microsoft, and that the software is also not working on newer versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Windows XP users on the other hand can still download the program from third party websites like the one linked above to test and analyze the boot speed of a Windows XP system.

Third party tools are available for newer versions of the Windows operating system such as Windows Vista or Windows 7. One option is Soluto, a free alternative which can be used to test the boot speed of the operating system, and make changes to the programs that start with it to change the boot speed this way.

The tool offers suggestions by taking into account what other users of the program have done to improve the startup of the operating system. This for instance includes information about how many users of Soluto have disabled a program so that it won't run on startup. Note that Soluto will restore all changes that you have made should you uninstall it again on your system.

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Comments

  1. Guest said on July 7, 2006 at 3:56 am
    Reply

    Quote from Microsoft:
    “Please note that Bootvis.exe is not a tool that will improve boot/resume performance for end users. Contrary to some published reports, Bootvis.exe cannot reduce or alter a system’s boot or resume performance.”
    http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/fastboot/default.mspx,

  2. matt said on July 3, 2006 at 12:35 pm
    Reply

    jayse is more or less correct – the cool bits of bootvis were built into xp. ts handy for one time diagnosis etc, but its not a magic fix-all.. youre better off doinglike jayse recommends, defrag your hard disk, and clean some of the crap off it! so many people have so much junk on their pc that they dont need, or, does a job that another program does already.. :)

  3. Martin said on June 28, 2006 at 3:38 pm
    Reply

    Well Jayse it made my system faster. Believe it or not..

  4. Jayse said on June 28, 2006 at 2:15 pm
    Reply

    Bootvis is a waste of time and space Because XP already dose these tasks itself, on average it dose it every 3 days. Bootvis was made for developers to help tune thier software.
    I’ve tried it myself and it makes no difference, a good defrag will speed things up more than this tool.

  5. Max said on June 26, 2006 at 11:33 pm
    Reply

    Thanks a lot Martin. =)

  6. Martin said on June 26, 2006 at 9:25 pm
    Reply

    Max the tool was developed by Microsoft itself and should be safe to use. It optimises file placement on hard drive for files that are needed during boot up as far as I know.

  7. Max said on June 26, 2006 at 7:03 pm
    Reply

    Is this program safe to use? And what exactly does it do? How does it boot XP faster? Does it turn off some of the startup programs or what?

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