Is there an app that can let the startup be smoother in XP? Whenever XP starts up, it shows you what it's loading, and sometimes, I'll see half a taskbar, or my icons blink, or something like that.
Is there an app that can let it fade smoothly in after it's done loading the core stuff?
Well, I don't know any program that does that, but you can improve the start up of you PC by managing the start up programs (like the MSN, Winamp, Yahoo! Widgets, etc) The less programs there is at the start up, the smother it will be. Another way to, is to constantly clean your PC, use the Disk cleanup and disk defragmenter. (And you will improve your PC's health as well.
You could just turn off your monitor while it loads...
Smart-ass 
Well I think if you wrote a program and add it somewhere before explorer starts, you can get it to take a screenshot, wait for everything important to load, and fade out to close. As far as I understand (and ok, I don't understand all that much) this would be an entirely feasible task, so I wonder why it hasn't been attempted.
I guess because to get it to load before explorer would be incredibly hard, what with explorer being a part of windows and all.
I guess because to get it to load before explorer would be incredibly hard, what with explorer being a part of windows and all.
You mean like Windowblinds?
Yeah, like windowblinds.
Taking a picture, especially at that stage of bootup, would be REALLY slow, however.
How about just displaying black then? Or the desktop background from "HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesSystemWallpa
per" in the registry?
Well, I don't know any program that does that, but you can improve the start up of you PC by managing the start up programs (like the MSN, Winamp, Yahoo! Widgets, etc) The less programs there is at the start up, the smother it will be. Another way to, is to constantly clean your PC, use the Disk cleanup and disk defragmenter. (And you will improve your PC's health as well.
I concur manage your start up by using Msconfig goto start then run type msconfig then click the tab that says startup and un check what you don't want to start
Yeah, like I don't know if there's a program for that becuase I've tried to find a PC speedy upper, it takes only 30 secs for normal bootup but then there's like 40 seconds of a blackscreen before the login screen goes up. In total it takes 1.25 mins for my HP Pavilion Notebook w/WindowsVista HomePremium to boot up. One thing I use alot is Ccleaner, it cleans temp files, unused bad cache and program files, and also has the feature to get rid of of fix registry keys w/its regcleaner. So far that's all I can tell u.
There's not a generic "speedy upper", though there are tweaks to speed stuff up.
My PC boots in about 30 seconds, (that's off to firefox open), so just defrag and stuff, man.
Ya i feel all you need to do is just clean the SOB up not just limiting to cCleaner do Defrag mabey run a virus scan and a adware scan and also limit your startup
Don't worry everyone, I run various virus/spyware scans every month or so, and use autoruns to manage my startup programs, though I don't defrag my computer that often.
I'm mainly concerned with the fact that explorer takes a good 15 seconds to start up and manages to look ugly while doing it. (Why does it need to draw some ugly rectangles when it could just load quietly in the background?!)
Also, the dock program I am using (can't live without 'em) starts up really late (after the less useful stuff like)
So I'm either looking for a way for all this loading to become less ugly, or for a way to rearrange startup order (which is very difficult to do without a whole array of stupid shareware programs or using an unflexible batch file, which I will do as a last resort)
Defragment your computer.It'll load faster.
Ya thats what i suggest also Defrag it then go from there if that does not work get back to us
looks sick, and don't worry you others, I'll defrag too 
Edit: Who knew finding vosbl would be such a pain? Does anyone have it and would be willing to share it with me? I can't find it. A link will do.
Edit2: Sick, I found it 
http://www.osx-e.com/downloads/application...bootloader.html
looks sick, and don't worry you others, I'll defrag too
That program is pretty cool looking but it still is good to dfrag 
That program is pretty cool looking but it still is good to dfrag
guys I saw your recent posts and yeah I'll take your advice and Defrag my system. I never new what defraging was 'till yesterday so I never messed w/that. Then yesterday I got a PCWorld newsletter saying that the best way to speed your PC w/o installing 3rd party apps is to defrag the system. My PC is about 11 months old so when I opened the defrag app it said it can take a few mins to a few hours. I started it at 8pm and it wasn't even done w/scanning my C: drive at 11pm. So I had to cancel the defrag and I'll do it again on the weekend when I have more time. And the dude who posted this (maybe AndrewYY), just defrag and see what ur system does. And just to let u know my old XPPro desktop wasn't so smooth booting up either so yeah.
So I'm either looking for a way for all this loading to become less ugly, or for a way to rearrange startup order (which is very difficult to do without a whole array of stupid shareware programs or using an unflexible batch file, which I will do as a last resort)
Try r2 Studios' Startup Delayer.
thanks, it looks very promising
Awesome I'm glad I could help
Aqua-Soft Forums