Just looking at what OS to run on my incar pc. I was thinking windows 98/me just for speed of boot, but some of the software i wan to run wont run on less than windows 2000. The spec of the machine im looking at is around P3 750mhz 40gb hdd and 256 or 512mb ram s3 savage 8mb graphics

 

Im planing on running datascan, some kind of satnav and mp3s/mp4s off the machine so what sort of boot time do you think id be looking at?

Or maybe looking at a celeron 1.8ghz processor (what do you think speed difference between these 2?)

More RAM. That's the key really. You could always make a solid state hard drive. You can do this by getting a 2GB CF card and buying a IDE - CF adapter. On ebay they go for like £10

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Bootable-Dual-Compact-Flash-CF-to-IDE-Adaptor-Adapter_W0QQitemZ9731574708QQcategoryZ41994QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

There ya go, even cheaper!

SOunds good, what sort of boot time do you think with celeron 1.8ghz say 512mb and cf card to boot and a HDD to store mp3s etc on?

A few seconds I think. Check http://www.mp3car.com - loads of people have done it

Have a look at products such as winlite and minlogin. Winlite allows you to create stripped down installations of XP and minlogin replaces the standard winlogin for faster (auto) login.

 

There are loads of tips and guides out there.

 

One thing I will point out is to avoid going overboard with the Ram. Most Carputers will be configured to boot from Hibernation for the fastest boot time, however the more Ram you have the longer Hibernation takes !

 

No need to exceed 512mb !

BEFORE YOU CHANGE ANYTHING ON YOUR PC - MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A CURRENT BACKUP AND SYSTEM STATE RECOVERY DISK.

 

The following is an unofficial tip and I take no repsonsabilty for peoples dead pc's. These are things I did years ago from my time as a server engineer.

 

Steves tips for fast booting PC

 

IN THE BIOS (first bit with black screen)

 

change the boot order to check for the Hard disk first, most pc's check the floppy or cd rom first tha can add up to 5 seconds to boot times.

 

IN WINDOWS

 

Delete all the fonts you know you will never use. Windows has to load

all of these into memory as the os is booting up, you will find the biggest gains here with pc's with little or slow memory. This can make booting 4x faster on slow machines.

 

AGAIN - Only do this if have a current backup. I remember this took me a couple of attempts to get right, and windows will blue screen if it tries to use a font for system purposes and it isn't there.

Have a look at products such as winlite and minlogin. Winlite allows you to create stripped down installations of XP and minlogin replaces the standard winlogin for faster (auto) login.

 

There are loads of tips and guides out there.

 

One thing I will point out is to avoid going overboard with the Ram. Most Carputers will be configured to boot from Hibernation for the fastest boot time, however the more Ram you have the longer Hibernation takes !

 

No need to exceed 512mb !

Good point, I never thought of that!

I never knew that tip about fonts Stevie, might try that. Cheers!

just serached on nlite, seems great bit of software. Are you booting off CF lagrath or using a HDD and hiberante?

More RAM. That's the key really. You could always make a solid state hard drive. You can do this by getting a 2GB CF card and buying a IDE - CF adapter. On ebay they go for like £10

 

 

Just to butt in......... that's an awesome find...... Gosh i'm just thinking what else you could use that for...

Does look good, just not sure how much extra speed it would give boot time wise? Im looking for around 10second boot if i can, then i wont be too worried about hibernating the system

Yeah, i wonder what the tranfer rate is.... to do any good it needs to be 60-70mb sec???

Started searching mp3car forums, but man thats a hornest nest of the "best way to fast boot" just waiting on sourcing my laptop from flebay then its game on!

Also when in XP click Start, goto and click Run, then type in msconfig... You can also untick a load of unneccessarry programs in the "Startup" and "Services" sub menus which will make your PC boot quicker and also make the running of XP faster...