"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
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Whereas this desktop using very ordinary components is asking for my
password in under 7 seconds and is ready to use in 15.

Your PC boots from total power-off (ie not resuming from hibernation or
sleep) to password and desktop in 15 seconds? I'm impressed. My two PCs
(both Win 7) take about 5 mins from power-off state, and that's after
checking for unwanted startup processes (msconfig) etc and after running
CCLEANER. What OS do you use? And is that with spinning HDD or solid-state?

I tend to leave my desktop PC on 24/7 because I use it as a PVR and for
logging info from my weather station, so I only reboot it about one every
couple of weeks (eg after MS updates). I tend to leave my laptop on as well
(even if I put it to sleep when I'm not using it) because its battery no
longer holds any charge so it needs to be booted from cold each time. Of
course booting from sleep only works as long as the laptop is plugged into
its power supply. For some reason, hibernate (boot from memory image on disk
rather than from battery-backed RAM) is greyed out on my laptop.