How fast can Windows boot?

[Tartares]

Hi guys, ive been tinkering with my system to get my boot time as short as possible with one ssd and faster booting settings in windows 10. I got it down to 16 seconds from pushing the button to fully operational system. Is there any secret way to shave off even more time, maybe by using m.2 drive or anything else. And is there a limit to how fast the system can boot?

[Timotheus2]

Here they got down to 4.9 seconds.

[Levent]

3 minutes ago, Tartares said:

Is there any secret way to shave off even more time

Yes, never turn it off. Jokes aside, unless your boot time is in minutes, you really shouldnt care.

[HanZie82]

3 minutes ago, Tartares said:

Hi guys, ive been tinkering with my system to get my boot time as short as possible with one ssd and faster booting settings in windows 10. I got it down to 16 seconds from pushing the button to fully operational system. Is there any secret way to shave off even more time, maybe by using m.2 drive or anything else. And is there a limit to how fast the system can boot?

Well lets start of with the beginning, what have you done to speed up your BIOS and how long does that take?
Then what are the programs you have auto-start with windows? Cus those matter too. Also clean the boot drive from left over update files they can (SOMETIMES) add to boot time.
But yes my heavily used machine will reboot in 15 and from cold start its about 10 seconds giver or take.
But my BIOS only takes 2 seconds cus i set that to ultrafast. Not possible on every motherboard...

[Vishera]

NVME SSDs are a lot faster,

I recommend the Kingston A2000 with 2,200MB read and 2,000MB write or the faster Kingston KC2000 with  3,000MB read and 2,000MB write.

[HanZie82]

Or the even faster Samsung EVO 970+ that i got, 3500MB read/write.

 

[Vishera]

2 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Or the even faster Samsung EVO 970+ that i got, 3500MB read/write.

The EVO drives are very good but pricey

[PopsicleHustler]

I have one of the cheapest Kingston A400 SSDs and I'm totally fine with 20-25 second boot from power on to my desktop.

 

You need high end PCI-E 4.0 SSDs with brutal speeds if you want to achieve max boot time.

[Vishera]

4 minutes ago, PopsicleHustler said:

I have one of the cheapest Kingston A400 SSDs and I'm totally fine with 20-25 second boot from power on to my desktop.

 

You need high end PCI-E 4.0 SSDs with brutal speeds if you want to achieve max boot time.

Each reply reveals a even faster way than the previous one

Yep,the PCI-E 4.0 drives are the fastest that i know of.

[HanZie82]

Just now, PopsicleHustler said:

I have one of the cheapest Kingston A400 SSDs and I'm totally fine with 20-25 second boot from power on to my desktop.

 

You need high end PCI-E 4.0 SSDs with brutal speeds if you want to achieve max boot time.

TBH i dont think changing over the PCIe4.0 would change anything. I mean the older PCIe3.0 is already plenty fast for loading the OS, since it also needs some CPU and memory to work with so it can be bottlenecked.


 

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

The EVO drives are very good but pricey

I dont like pricey, but i did pay only 60 bucks for my 250GB EVO. wich in my mind was very reasonable.
If you want quality, you jsut have to pay for that.

But dont get me wrong. If i'd change to regular sata SSD its would still be under 20 seconds.
NVME speeds you will only really notice in server/NAS aplications. That MOST home-users will never reach. So dont worry. Even a 20 dollar SSD will improve on mechenical so much.

[PopsicleHustler]

4 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

TBH i dont think changing over the PCIe4.0 would change anything. I mean the older PCIe3.0 is already plenty fast for loading the OS, since it also needs some CPU and memory to work with so it can be bottlenecked.

 

Well if we're talking about going lower than 16 seconds, so going as high  as possible is a must.

[HanZie82]

Just now, PopsicleHustler said:

Well if we're talking about going lower than 16 seconds, so going as high  as possible is a must.

Nah not really. For normal home use you surely wouldnt notice any difference.
If you boot with NVME drive in 16 seconds, changing to a PCIe4.0 NVME drive will result in a boot time of you guessed it 16 seconds.

 

[PopsicleHustler]

Just now, HanZie82 said:

Nah not really. For normal home use you surely wouldnt notice any difference.
If you boot with NVME drive in 16 seconds, changing to a PCIe4.0 NVME drive will result in a boot time of you guessed it 16 seconds.

 

That's the thing. OP is using SATA drive, not PCI-E NVME.

[Vishera]

4 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

I dont like pricey, but i did pay only 60 bucks for my 250GB EVO. wich in my mind was very reasonable.
If you want quality, you jsut have to pay for that.

It's still pricey,for the same price you can get a Kingston A2000 with 500 GB,that's double the capacity.

Just now, HanZie82 said:

Nah not really. For normal home use you surely wouldnt notice any difference.
If you boot with NVME drive in 16 seconds, changing to a PCIe4.0 NVME drive will result in a boot time of you guessed it 16 seconds.

OP has SATA SSD,there will be a difference but not a very noticeable one.

[HanZie82]

Going from SATA to NVME will be a difference yes, but what i was trying to make clear, going for PCIe4.0 NVME is pretty useless as the differences are to small to notice. With the current price difference its just not worth it.

[homeap5]

The only method to speed up boot is to have bios that allows disable some things in bios and speed up post. In theory all producers made options to speed up boot by decreasing post time, but some of them made it better (Asus, ASRock sometimes) and some worst (MSI - they fast boot works good years ago, now it's a joke - and I'm taking about post time, not speed up loading system time). For example - Asus has fast boot and possibility to disable many devices during post (like internal additional controllers, network boot in general etc) since in MSI bios you can only disable boot possiblity of some devices while they still initialize. It's many to explain, but at the end everything depends on your luck - how good your BIOS is. If you can disable all tests (including memory change etc) then you can decrease post time. Windows itself boots very fast, so it's not a big problem and here you cannot really speed up so much.

 

There is also different thing that you should consider - is faster boot means faster working. There are some tools that can improve your Windows experience and speed up many operations (like software for some keyboards that can assign extra macros for additional buttons, preloaders for some programs like Open Office that makes opening documents faster, filemanagers or tools to improve explorer functionality and many other tools that may load with Windows). All of them may add few seconds to your boot time, but after that you'll have computer prepared for faster work. I prefer a little longer boot time with benefits than empty system.

[HanZie82]

17 hours ago, homeap5 said:

The only method to speed up boot is to have bios that allows disable some things in bios and speed up post. In theory all producers made options to speed up boot by decreasing post time, but some of them made it better (Asus, ASRock sometimes) and some worst (MSI - they fast boot works good years ago, now it's a joke - and I'm taking about post time, not speed up loading system time). For example - Asus has fast boot and possibility to disable many devices during post (like internal additional controllers, network boot in general etc) since in MSI bios you can only disable boot possiblity of some devices while they still initialize. It's many to explain, but at the end everything depends on your luck - how good your BIOS is. If you can disable all tests (including memory change etc) then you can decrease post time. Windows itself boots very fast, so it's not a big problem and here you cannot really speed up so much.

 

There is also different thing that you should consider - is faster boot means faster working. There are some tools that can improve your Windows experience and speed up many operations (like software for some keyboards that can assign extra macros for additional buttons, preloaders for some programs like Open Office that makes opening documents faster, filemanagers or tools to improve explorer functionality and many other tools that may load with Windows). All of them may add few seconds to your boot time, but after that you'll have computer prepared for faster work. I prefer a little longer boot time with benefits than empty system.

Yeah just to add to this, also remember adding more programs (thus more workload) will not magically make everything work faster.

Slow computers will still be slow.

[homeap5]

1 hour ago, HanZie82 said:

Yeah just to add to this, also remember adding more programs (thus more workload) will not magically make everything work faster.

Slow computers will still be slow.

Yes, but in many cases, if we're talking about work in office for example, computer speed is less important than user speed. Even fastest computer without software and with very slow user will be less effective than celeron with useful tools and user who can optimize his work.