boot time optimization and games partition and documents partition...

[DickDiver]

hello

after reading a while this forum I have to say thank to Jeroen for developing such a great free tool in his free time!

I had over the years several defraggers on my workstations but I always hated that they installed background services,
so I went to JKD! I use it with JkDefragGUI cause JkDefragTWgui doesnt start at the moment.

There are some questions which still bother me very much. First how can I improve boot time?
I have my system XP installed with nLite and I have only 'windows' on C:
%programs% and %documents & settings% are on D:
Some games are on E: and all the zips and vids and mp3 are on F:

So my strategy was for 3 months now to defrag each partition by name ( a 5?). I did this by starting a BartPE CD and defrag from there each partition. The inside windows itself I did regularly a fast optimization and on F only a normal defrag. The result was that boot time was very slow but all the rest fast. So good so far.

No I wonder if that procedure is a good one
Also I tried to defrag c: -boot as recomended here but well I couldn't cause I took defrag out from my windows install by the help of nLite ... 

So I assume is that all I can do is wait for v4.0 or to buy PerfectDisk right?

yours
DD

[jeroen]

First how can I improve boot time?

Is the "c:\Windows\Prefetch\Layout.ini" file still being updated by Windows? If not then you are stuck. The Windows defragmenter, and commercial defragmenters such as PerfectDisk, all depend on that file. But if you have deleted the Windows defragger then maybe the file is not updated any more.

I have my system XP installed with nLite and I have only 'windows' on C:
%programs% and %documents & settings% are on D:

When the computer is booting it loads many files, mainly from the windows folder, but also from the "Program Files" and "Documents and Settings". In your case Windows has to access 2 volumes, which makes booting very slow. Your computer will boot faster if you combine your C: and D: partitions.

So I assume is that all I can do is wait for v4.0

Yes, JkDefrag v3 does not support boot optimization.

[DickDiver]

Thank you for clarifications.

Prefetch: Well I have to check that but as far as I know that depends only on one or two registry settings and I could switch that on.

You wrote "In your case Windows has to access 2 volumes, which makes booting very slow. Your computer will boot faster if you combine your C: and D: partitions."

Mh, do you think that is possible with the help of an Acronis tool for example? I know that it has the functionality to merge partitions but I dont know if it is a good idea to do so if system dirs are considered. In my case those "docs&settings" on D:

Well, may be I am going to set up my windows new in some days because I ran into some backup issues with my setup. (It is easy to back up C: cause it is in my case tiny but it is more difficult to backup "doc&Settings" which beholds some registry settings as far as I know... what I did is to use ERUNT but thats another story..)

thank you

[TheKat]

You definitely must be very careful when merging partitions that Windows uses for "programs"... Even if the merge tool is capable of it, you will "loose" a drive letter. Windows will continue to look for certain things on drive D, not find them, and probably behave very strangely... So, I'm sorry to report your most "stable" solution is going to be a repartition/reinstall of Windows to make your two partitions into one...

The most reliable solution is probably a clean repartition of those two spaces. If your data is on a third partition, don't touch it. There should be nothing there Windows "needs" to track. Be sure to back up anything critical though, as it's always possible something will munch your data...

[Lebieque]

boot time, it's usually not just one, but a combination of issues concerning speed

somewhat off-topic, however, for what it's worth regarding the added speed through defragmentation thread. Self using XPsp2 single machine. Boot time after clean install (I do this annually) is between 1 1/2 and 3 sweeps, depending on how many additional XP components are loaded. After reinstalling my programs, boot time lengthened to between seven and nine sweeps and start menu icons showed some lag and sluggishness which would show some improvement after defragging, however not for very long. I always thought this to be the norm.

However, and I'm mentioning this regarding the boot time improvement through defrag, when AVG free upgraded to 516, things started to get a little cockeyed. False positives all over the place, such as long standing HP system files etc. etc. Formerly good files were suddenly corrupted and after a reboot fine again. Firefox and Thunderbird kept getting errors requiring frequent reinstallation or reboot. Almost as if my HD was beginning to see its ghost. At this stage I didn't connect this to AVG, but uninstalled it anyway because of the false positives and some less than savoury official answers on the AVG's help forum.

The immediate difference in boot time was as instantaneous as it was surprising. One and a half sweeps and no lags anymore. Almost as if a hand brake had been released. In consternation I re-installed AVG (this time 503, the old version) to check, and the long boot and general sluggishness was back again, and again gone after un-installation. Strangely enough, switching it off in Services and auto startup alone did not do the trick BTW, it had to be properly uninstalled.

[Kirkx]

"Strangely enough, switching AVG off in Services and auto startup alone did not do the trick BTW, it had to be properly uninstalled."

Nothing strange about this. It is the commonly recommended approach if you suspect that an antivirus is causing problems. Shutting it down, disabling in Services, etc. is not enough. It must be uninstalled. Same thing if you decide to try another antiV, you must first uninstall the previous one. Not sure why they are programmed that way.