In stumbling around trying to speed up my computer I noticed a little section in my MS Config options. Most of the newer computers that are running Vista are dual core computers and as such have more resources available for use during startup. By default, Vista uses just a single core for startup, but that can be easily changed by following the following steps to tweak this.
-> Step 1: In your start menu, type “msconfig” in the start menu search bar and hit enter. Your UAC should pop up and after you hit continue you will be brought to the MS Config GUI.
-> Step 2: Once you have the MS Config GUI window up, click on the Boot tab.
-> Step 3: Once in the Boot tab of the GUI, click on the “Advanced Options” button.
-> Step 4: Once you are in the Advanced Options GUI, you will notice that there is an option in the upper left of the GUI that will allow you to select how many cores to use. Set up yours like I have mine in the following image.
-> Step 5: Click Ok, then Ok again. Thats it, next time you reboot the computer or boot it up you should get it done a bit quicker.
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This “tweak” is in Windows NT on up and is displayed as /NUMPROC=.
I think you should check out the following link. It has warnings on the dangers involved.
http://winhlp.com/node/150
The purpose of those advanced options is typically for debugging or development purposes. In most cases you shouldn’t need to mess with them. I think this “tweak” is a great candidate for some simple testing. Basically, time a Cold boot, followed by a couple reboots without setting the processor number then do the same testing procedure with new settings. So get maybe 3 to 5 boot times for each to come up with an average.
Just an Idea