How to Speed Up Vista's Boot Time

A good thing to do before making adjustments to Vista settings and operation is to set a Vista system restore point in case something goes wrong and makes your PC unbootable. We will try our best to avoid that, but let’s be cautious.

Also, in the following, it’s assumed that if you have User Access Control (UAC) active, you’ll click through any questions from Vista security by giving yourself all the permissions to continue.

Creating a restore point isn’t hard. Right-click “Computer” and select Properties – or press the Windows key, right-click “Computer” in the Start Menu, and select Properties. Then click on “Advanced system settings” under “Tasks.” This will open the “System Properties” dialog. Click the “Create” button and give your restore point a name. It will then say “Creating restore point” and when done, “The restore point was created successfully.”

If you get error 0×8004230C and a message that “Shadow copying the specified volume is not supported,” then the Shadow Copy service is not running on your Vista PC. Unless, for some reason, you don’t really WANT Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) running, you can fix this by pressing the Windows key and typing “services.msc” into the search block. This will open the “Services” dialog.

Find “Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider” in the list and right-click it. This will open the “Shadow Copy Provider Properties” dialog. Under “Startup type:” set it to Automatic. Then click “OK.” Back in the Services dialog, right-click the same line and select “Start” to make the service start immediately.

Then do the same for “Volume Shadow Copy.”

Once both services are running, you won’t see the error message and your restore point will be created.

Shadow Copy in Vista powers the Vista Backup Center, “Previous Versions“ and the ability to go back to the “last known good configuration” when a startup problem occurs. There’s no good reason NOT to be running this service in Vista. (I’m sure that somebody will let me know if I’m wrong here.)

Now that we're safely backed up, let's continue.

Unless you’re running a dual-boot machine, you can save some start up time by turning off Vista boot options you don’t need and turning on options you do need. This also is not complicated. Click on Computer, then Properties, and then “Advanced system settings” to open the System Properties dialog. Under “Startup and Recovery,” click the Settings button.

Un-check “Time to display list of operating systems.” (Unless, again, you have a dual-boot configuration.) While you’re here, it’s a good idea to set “Time to display recovery options when needed” to 15 seconds or more. Then click OK twice to close everything.

Each time you start up your PC or laptop, Vista keeps track of the programs that you start. It then creates small pointer files (.pf) in a Prefetch subdirectory of Windows. Microsoft says, "The prefetch folder is self-maintaining, and there's no need to delete it or empty its contents. If you empty the folder, Windows and your programs will take longer to open the next time you turn on your computer.”

Let’s test that notion. Press the Windows key and enter “prefetch.”

My experience is that the Prefetch folder contains pointers to programs that I haven’t used in quite some time, and even pointers to programs that are no longer installed.

It certainly does not hurt to dump the Prefetch folder, reboot, and let Windows restart. You may save as much as five seconds here. (That’s not a lot, but every bit helps.)

To dump the Prefetch folder, click any file in the folder and then press Ctrl-A to select all files. Note: if you are using an external storage card for ReadyBoost, press Ctrl and click the ReadyBoost folder to un-select it. Then press Delete to finish.