November 2004
Intermediate to advanced
272 pages
10h 6m
English
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STARTUP ANNOYANCES
SHAVING SECONDS OFF STARTUP TIMES
The Annoyance:
It takes forever to boot my system. Do I really need to see the memory count or RAID drive check every time the system starts? How can I get to my operating system faster?
The Fix:
Most PCs make it through the self-test part of each startup in less than 15 seconds, but you can change several default BIOS settings to shave a few precious seconds off the normal startup. For example, the Phoenix/Award BIOS version used with the Tyan Tomcat i7210 (S5112) Pentium 4 “Northwood” or “Prescott” motherboard provides a Quick Power On Self Test option in the Advanced BIOS Features menu (see Figure 1-6). When enabled, the BIOS skips optional parts of the Power On Self Test (POST), such as the memory check.
You can also disable the Boot Up Floppy Seek option. This prevents the system from looking for a floppy drive at each startup (a test that can take several seconds). Also, check the Boot Sequence, which lets you specify which drives the BIOS checks for bootable media (in other words, an operating system). Make sure the boot sequence lists the drive you boot from most frequently first (normally the C: drive). If it lists other drives first (like a floppy drive or CD drive), the BIOS will waste precious seconds waiting for each drive to respond. In fact, set any unused drive spots to None (rather than Auto) to prevent the system from checking for nonexistent drives.
Figure 1-6. Speed your system startup with some carefully selected ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.