Over time, as users install and uninstall apps, the size of the Registry can balloon, thereby increasing load times. The Registry is actually a database that stores configuration settings, options, and key locations for both high-level applications and low-level OS services. The Registry contains information about what services, drivers, and applications load during boot. After this, the Windows Executive, a collection of essential services such as the virtual memory manager and the I/O manager, fires up and loads the Windows Registry. The HAL functions as the interface between the operating system and the underlying hardware. At some point during this process, the core of the Windows operating system–the kernel–loads into memory along with some key drivers and the hardware abstraction layer. The boot manager then begins the process of loading Windows. That’s the start of the operating system load process.įor Windows, the code that your processor loads is the Windows Boot Manager. Then it looks for a specific location on the first storage device–probably your hard drive, assuming that the system isn’t set up to boot from a network–and runs code found in that location. The boot ROM enumerates all of the hardware in the system and performs a number of diagnostic tests. Next, the processor starts to run code that it finds at this location, which is the system boot loader.
Illustration by The Heads of StateWhen you fire up your PC, the processor performs some initial startup steps and then looks for a specific memory address in the boot loader ROM. What you won’t see from optimizing a gradually cluttered real-world system are insanely big improvements, as you might with some of the artificial tests that are floating around. Games and applications have come and gone, too.
Over the years, I have installed numerous graphics cards on it, which also means numerous driver installs and uninstalls. This setup allowed me to test real-world improvements in boot times on a system that reflected real-world usage.