Computer Startup Times

Hi, I was wondering how long it should take a computer to startup (get to desktop) and also how long should it take on average for the cpu to go idle (1-2% usage).

Starting from the moment you press the power button.

My PC

1 minute to desktop
2 minutes to idle

Also I was wondering if there were any tips to speed things up, startup wise.

depends on many factors including but not limited to:
whats in the startup menu
speed of processor
RAM
Number of HDD installed
Peripherals connected to PC
used vs blank space on HDD
HDD size
Windows version
etc etc etc

Dont forget a big important thing - a new pc ( or newly installed os ) will boot to windows faster than a 6 month old pc.Why ? you may ask - its because of the extra stuff that gets installed and sits in registry as well as fragmented data on hard drive.
With many programs starting up as desktop starts the system seems to slow as its having to get instructions for what program to run and how - antivirus ,sound manager , internet details.
Often ive seen occasions where ive had a program go a bit bad and when windows tries to do its job its very sluggish and not every time does windows say - that programs messed up.
I always run a registry cleaner just to make sure nothing is sitting in registry that shouldnt be ( like part of a program that didnt uninstall correctly ) also a registry defrag program is usefull.
There can be quite a lot of factors to watch for when pc does go sluggish at startup and sadly most have to be gone through 1 by 1 eliminating them .Once i had a simple program for my monitor that quit , no error message but only came to light when i checked bootup via hijack this and found the file was missing and even its folder was partially empty.Removed the file and trace of the program and restarted pc and it was fixed - what happened to cause the problem i dont know as the program/files shouldnt have vanished. But it was enough to make windows boot up extend to well over 2 mins.

Install your system on a Solid State Drive (SSD).

I am at (Windows XP) desktop in under 40 seconds, and less than 1min 15secs to idle... that's after loading a ton of stuff and a quick startup AV scan. I could probably do a lot better, but I haven't spent any time trying to optimise.

Depending on how comfortable you are fiddling around with your computer you can follow these steps to speed up boot times:

1) Open msconfig (Start > Run > msconfig), and disable any unused/unimportant Services (only if you know what you are doing!) - I would recommend only disabling Non-Microsoft Services which you are 100% sure you don't need and for obvious reasons don't disable any Microsoft Services.

2) Disable/Remove any unimportant/unused start-up items

3) Run a full registry scan and clean any temp/unused files (I'd recommend using a program called CCleaner)

4) Run a complete Defrag of your HDD.

If you're not 100% sure what you are doing then just run CCleaner and do a defrag. You might be able to change the start-up items and unless you are confident/you know what you're doing, don't touch the Services.

These steps will work for an old PC which used to be fairly quick but has slowed due to fragmented HDD/old data clogging up the Registry etc, it won't work if your computer is slow due to hardware issues. I done this on my dads 4 year old PC a few weeks ago and the start-up time went from 3/4 minutes to around 1 minute.

Those times seem pretty average to me.

Edit - btw, many anti-virus programs will slow down startup, as they check and setup various things during the process.

If you use XP you could try PageDefrag

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb897426.aspx

Both Vista & 7 startup much faster than XP ever did for me..... With my current setup I can get on the internet in 35-36 seconds (Win7) with Vista it was 47-48 and XP was never better than 90 seconds.

Short of buying new hardware, the single most important thing you can do to speed up your computer's start time (and overall performance too) is to go through msconfig and kill off all the crapware that doesn't need to run at startup, or doesn't need to run at all. How do you know what's essential and what isn't? This is a very good place to start: http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php.

For my current system, I am at desktop in about 15 seconds, browsing the web at 30 seconds. WinXP x64.

Use CCleaner (Crap Cleaner, google it.) to clean up unwanted trash on your HDD in one swing. Rather then do these things manually, which you can do... CCleaner does these things all at once depending on what you have selected. Not only does it do these things, but it also has a Registry cleaner which works flawlessly and does not corrupt the registry. It finds problems and eradicates them without a question. It also has a handy uninstall manager. Another feature it has is the ability to wipe the free space of your HDD. It does exactly that. When you delete something, the file from windows explorer is removed almost as if the file itself is a pointer or shortcut to THE file on your HDD. The data which contained the file or files on your HDD is now part of over-writable space (aka, Free Space). This can be for security purposes so things cannot be recovered as easy or at all, but I've actually found it to give me some space back. I don't know how I got the space back but I can only assume there was a corruption or damaged part of the file system that was repaired. It was on a previous Windows installation.

CCleaner is 100% Freeware and will never expire, has full features and will never cost you a single penny.

CCleaner keeps my Windows installations running very, very smooth without a single problem. Try it out and see what results you get.

(I also never, ever shut off my Gaming PC or Mac. I love tapping the mouse or keyboard and having stuff up within less than 10 seconds. Actually, every once in a while they are restarted (like when a application is installed or uninstalled) or shut down for a bit to dump RAM. Though, I don't need to often because I keep that to a minimum on the PC gaming rig with Win 7... and Mac's don't need to be restarted because they don't have a registry unless a major security update occurs.)

One minute to desktop isn't bad really (assuming this is from a cold boot), but if you want to improve that, check out Malwarebytes StartupLite.