Lenovo has been “tweaking” its laptops and PCs in preparation for Windows 7, heavily improving startup and shutdown times.

Some of the methods, however, can be easily transferred to any Windows system – in this post I’ll be concentrating on XP, but I’m sure many of these will work on other versions.

So, here are some of the things that Lenovo did and what you can do that’s similar…

Fixed the drivers of on-board hardware components that were cumulatively causing massive delays.

Ok, so there’s not much we, as individuals, can do to fix drivers. However, it is important to stay on top of Windows drivers to ensure that you benefit changes of this type.

Personally, I have a spreadsheet of download links for my drivers and regularly check them. The other option is to use software that will look for updates for you. DriverMax is a popular example, although others are available.

Tweaked the BIOS phase of startup to temporarily hide some devices from Windows 7, so that the OS only loads the drivers after the boot is finished.

What they’re doing here is hiding hardware devices from Windows until its loaded. This may be a webcam, CD drive, etc. Now, there are some things you can do here for yourself…

1. Create a secondary hardware profile. This gives you an additional boot option where, say, lesser used hardware devices won’t be loaded. This is done by turning off different services (and having different startup options too). I used to have one for gaming, whereas non-gaming services would be disabled, saving memory and boot time.
2. Switch hardware off that you don’t use very often. No, ok, this won’t stop the drivers from loading but there may be some exchange (or handshaking) of information that may be reduced. My scanner and lazer printer, for instance, are used only occasionally, so are left unplugged when not in use. Of course, this also saves on electricity!
3. Uninstall old drivers. When you change hardware, you often leave the old drivers behind. Plug everything in, start up your PC and then find and uninstall any old drivers.

Tweaked Windows 7 to delay the loading of non-essential services and applications until after startup.

Ah, now this is definitely something we can do ourselves.

The first thing I’d recommend you do is to go through the various startup programs and disable those you don’t feel you need (RealPlayer, Quicktime and Java update checkers are popular ones to disable). You can use msconfig, but I find the option within the Tools section of CCleaner a better option.

A quick tip… you’ll find some startup options that don’t appear within the “Startup” folder in your Start Menu. If one of these is only relevant to particular users, who have their own profiles, then note the URL that this startup is running. Disable it and then create the relevant shortcut within the appropriate profile startup folder.

You can also delay when various startup options execute. So, lets say you REALLY want Quicktime, et al, to do their online checks, do they have to do them as soon as the computer starts? Programs such as Startup Delayer will allow you to delay startup tasks.

That’s applications. Now services. You have to be careful with these, but its still worth going through all your services and looking for those that are best set to manual or disabled entirely. There are many websites dedicated to which ones should be changed.

And that’s it. If you have any suggestions on how to improve startup and shutdown, feel free to contact me (or add a comment to this post).

Amazon are now allowing pre-orders of Windows 7 to be made¹. It’s not released until October, but expect it to sell like the proverbial hot cakes!

After the failure that was Vista (sorry, but it was), Windows 7 is finally putting Microsoft back on track. I’ve been running the Beta (and later, RC) version and have found it quick and easy to use – once I know my hardware will still work, I’d be happy to upgrade both my main PC and Netbook to Windows 7.

Unless you have some specific business requirements, the Home Premium edition is probably your best bet. And you no longer have to worry about whether to buy the 32-bit or 64-bit version, as both are included.

Due to a European ruling, Windows 7 sold in Europe is a special “E” edition. This means that it comes without a browser (or, more specifically, Internet Explorer). Therefore you will need to ensure you have a CD, USB stick, etc, ready with one before installing Windows 7.

1. The current is only available while stocks last, and must end by midnight on 9th August 2009 [↩]

With the smaller screen resolution of Netbooks it’s often the case that program windows aren’t always visible on screen, in particular with the top bar hidden off screen so you can’t move it back in view, or it may be a window without a “dragable area”.

Linux has a great function that allows you to move windows with the mouse when pressing the ALT key. Well, now, you can have this on Windows too thanks to AltDrag,  a small, free application.

Not much else to say – it works a treat and gets the thumbs up from me.

Yesterday I downloaded two software releases. And was left underwhelmed.

First up was the official launch of Internet Explorer 8. Nothing much appears to have changed since the Beta versions and I continue to be left disappointed.

People are turning towards Firefox, not because it shows web pages better, but because it’s more customisable – plugins, themes, etc. Microsoft has never really got this. Yes, Windows has themes and IE has addons, but there are few available and they’re hard to develop and implement. Instead we have Web Slices and Accelerators, requiring web developers to change their code and are deeply, deeply dull.

Next up, the people behind Xandros Linux launched Presto, which is intended to be used as a fast startup alternative to Windows. I’ve tried it on both my home PC and my Netbook and, yes, it works. It installs easily and configures Windows automatically to dual boot. Unfortunately, on both PCs I had different BIOS errors during the Presto boot and, yes, it’s still in Beta but it’s only a few weeks before the final version is released. Yet it lacks the basic ability to change languages and keyboards. So I’m stuck with a US keyboard layout.

By default it books with Firefox, Pidgin and Skype and you can add (some free, some you must pay for) extra applications via their website.

The final version is going to cost about $20, but that’s as much as they’re giving away right now. Personally, I’m going to wait for the final version as, at the moment, it’s seriously lacking that “oomph” that would get me excited.

Having said that I would recommend a rebuild of your PC every year, it’s a bit galling that it’s nearly 2 years since I’ve done it myself. In fact that’s as long as I’ve had my Mesh PC, and I’ve never got around to it.

The reasons, though, are simple – I was afraid to. When I’ve self-built machines the past I knew exactly how they worked, where the software and drivers were, etc. But with someone else’s build, it’s not quite the same.

Anyway, I went for it yesterday. Mesh provide a recovery partition – but that turns out not work (it was looking for a non-existent drive). They also provide a CD¹, but looking at this showed none of the installed software that the Mesh came with (Microsoft Works and a suite of media software). Obviously if I rebuilt with this I’d lose them all. Heading to the Mesh website gave me my answer – they expect you to reinstall Windows, but replacing the original build, which leaves software installations and document intact. This wasn’t my preferred choice so I “bit the bullet” and reformatted my drive and reinstalled Windows. So far, all is working well. The base drivers and software are now in place and I’ve configured it how I like it (to a certain level) – then I’ll make an image of the drive, followed by installing all the other software and drivers and making final changes.

I took the opportunity to try out the Beta version of TeraCopy – a fast file copier which works alongside the standard Windows copying facility. It really is excellent and really improved copying speeds. This is a good opportunity to check whether my day-to-day backup system is working. But, just in case it isn’t, I used Teracopy to copy all the essential files to an external HD.

1. or is it a DVD? [↩]