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First of all, this tutorial only apply to those who only have one HDD on their primary IDE channel (nothing else on device 0 or 1) and a CD-ROM and/or DVD-ROM on the secondary IDE channel. Each time you boot Windows XP, there's an updated file called NTOSBOOT-*.pf who appears in your prefetch directory (%SystemRoot%Prefetch) and there's no need to erease any other files as the new prefetch option in XP really improves loading time of installed programs. We only want WindowsXP to boot faster and not decrease its performance. Thanks to Rod Cahoon (for the prefetch automation process...with a minor change of mine) and Zeb for the IDE Channel as those two tricks, coupled together with a little modification, result in an EXTREMELY fast bootup:

  1. Open notepad.exe, type "del c:windowsprefetch tosboot-*.* /q" (without the quotes) & save as "ntosboot.bat" in c:
  2. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "gpedit.msc".
  3. Double click "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and double click again on "Shutdown" in the right window.
  4. In the new window, click "add", "Browse", locate your "ntosboot.bat" file & click "Open".
  5. Click "OK", "Apply" & "OK" once again to exit.
  6. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "devmgmt.msc".
  7. Double click on "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
  8. Right click on "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Properties".
  9. Select the "Advanced Settings" tab then on the device 0 or 1 that doesn't have 'device type' greyed out select 'none' instead of 'autodetect' & click "OK".
  10. Right click on "Secondary IDE channel", select "Properties" and repeat step 9.
  11. Reboot your computer.
Your computer should be faster than before

1 Response to "How To Boot Xp Faster"

  1. Anonymous Says:

    VERY BAD ADVICE
    I have seen many tips to improve boot time but this is by far the worst. Unlike the majority who read this, I actually understand what it does. Steps 1-5 create a script that deletes the “NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.pf” file on computer shutdown. This file was specifically designed by Microsoft to optimize boot performance. How anyone could believe that deleting this file would improve boot time is baffling. It could only come from someone with a very twisted understanding of how prefetch works. Be very sure, doing this will not improve boot time, it will degrade it - possibly seriously. Steps 6-10 will remove a short delay in bootup, probably not noticeable.

    This "tip" can be found on many web sites, usually with the exact wording. Obviously the original author had absolutely no understanding of how prefetch works. If it actually worked, why did Microsoft not implement it? Does the author believe he understands the system better than Microsoft?

    References:
    http://home.comcast.net/~SupportCD/XPMyths.html
    http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000743.html
    http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000024.html
    http://djlizard.net/2006/06/02/157/

    Larry Miller
    Microsoft MCSA, Network+, A+

The world of computer, viruses, printers, networking and internet. Make your computer run better and run faster