Windows 7 Boot Speed

Over at TGDaily a flame war has begun against the self proclaimed “PC Tune-Up Experts” iolo technologies, after the statements which we reported on the 9th. iolo is making claim that Windows 7 boots 42% slower than its older brother Windows Vista.

iolo claims that it takes 1min 34secs for Windows 7 to reach the point where it is usable, opposed to Windows Vista which according to them, only takes 1min 6secs. I don’t know about you, but I have never had Windows Vista boot up from cold to usable in only 1 minute 6 seconds. My experience with Vista even after a fresh install meant I could set my computer booting in the morning, go start a revolution, and by the time I got back it still wouldn’t be usable.

TGDaily ran their own quick test on a 2.66GHz Core2Duo with 4GB of RAM running 64bit Windows 7 build 7600 (RTM release, which has been available for over 2 months now). They managed to achieve a boot up to processor idle in just 55 seconds, and achieved a shut down time of 16 seconds.

So I decided to run my own tests too, one on a 2GB Toshiba Tecra A9 laptop running 32bit RTM Windows 7 Ultimate, and one on a 3.2GHz Pentium D desktop with 2GB of RAM running 64bit RTM 7 Ultimate. On the laptop I got a 58 second boot (with MSN, AIM and Google Talk launching) and a 17 second shutdown. On the desktop I received a 48 second boot (with MSN, AIM and Google Talk launching) with a 16 second shut down. Both my laptop and desktop have had windows 7 RTM installed since early August, and both have been used daily for all kinds of bits and bobs. I am still far under the time that iolo are reporting that they recorded.

One thing that did intrigue me about this report from iolo is when they said that they had found that a 3 month installed version takes an extra minute to boot, this would suggest they are not doing these tests on the RTM version of Windows 7. This I find a little odd as it is the latest and most up-to-date version of Windows 7 which most accurately represents the version that will be available to be the public at launch. The RTM version of Windows 7 has only been available to since early August. So what do you readers think? Is there any truth in what iolo are saying? Or do you think it’s just a ploy to move copies of their PC optimisation software?