On Sat, 10 Jun 2017 14:56:24 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 10 Jun 2017 08:55:26 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
Win 7 does NOT have the Win 10 "fast startup" or the Win 8.1 "fast
boot" feature. Unless you have hibernate enabled or have performed
some of the Win 7 boot tweaks found on YouTube and elsewhere, Win 7
boots normally (cold boot) every time.

Having never used anything newer than XP, I was wondering if Win7 boots
as fast as XP, or is it slower?

I've been told that Win 7 is somewhat faster. As I previously
mentioned, such comparisons turn into apples and oranges comparisons
due to differences in hardware, differences in 32bit vs 64bit, etc.
The only comparisons I find valid is when I take a single machine, and
swap out two identical hard disk drives, one with XP and the other
with Win 7. Also, both machines should have XP and Win 7 updated to
the latest, with typical resident programs installed (virus scanner,
acrobat, skype, fancy video drivers, etc). Only then will I get a
valid comparison. Also, there's the question of when does one
consider the boot timing to end? I usually use when task manager
shows near zero CPU and disk usage. Or, maybe when the HD light
almost stops flashing. That's fine, but if the machine decides to
download or finish installing updates just after boot, the benchmarks
get mangled.

I've also seen benchmarks claiming that XP is faster than Win 7. When
I dug deeper, I found that the Win 7 machine was a fully loaded
production machine, while the XP machine had only the basic
installation to SP3 (service pack 3) without any further updates.
That's not very fair since the subsequent updates, and typical
installed resident programs, really slow down XP. On a fresh install,
on an Intel E8500 dual core machine, XP can easily boot in 45 seconds.
However, install the mass of updates and junkware, it will slow down
to about 6 minutes. Win 7 has even more updates, but the slowdown is
less.

For entertainment value, I just timed my HP Pavilion Elite m9077c
desktop, running Win 7, quad core Q6600, 8GB RAM, Seagate 1TB drive.
Well, that was a monumental waste of time. I'm at 10 minutes and the
HD is furiously bashing away. I haven't had it on for about a week,
so it's catching up with updates, virus scans, disk maintenance
(defrag), backup to NAS, etc. All that usually takes about an hour.
Maybe I'll try again later. Remind me if I forget.

I've never had any problems with the boot time of XP. Only once did I
get a computer that booted so damn slow I reinstalled XP.

I bought both my home and office XP machines in about 2006. I loaded
XP once, and have never had to reinstall XP. When I needed a larger
disk drive, I would clone the old drive to the new driver, and
continue merrily on my way. If you have to reinstall XP (and you're
not cleaning up the mess left by a virus), then you're doing something
wrong.

I had bought a
used laptop on ebay and they seller sold it with a fresh install of XP,
but then he put so much anti-virus software on it, that it literally
took near 5 min to boot. Once booted the thing ran so slow I could not
even use it. I finally wiped the HDD and just reinstalled XP. Problem
solved!

Sure, but did you install a virus program, any virus program? Even
MSE (microsoft security essentials) takes its toll on performance.
Comparing performance with and without an anti-virus program isn't
fair.

Incidentally, I don't care much about speed when the differences are
minor. Initially, most of my customers want speed and features. After
the smoke clears and reality sets in, they change their mind and
demand reliability at whatever speed and features will produce a
reliable machine. My days of overclocking, registry tweaking, and
alleged performance boosting software are long over.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558