Howdy!

After using a Commodore 64 PC for 10 Years, I started using a 486DX33, then
12 Years later I decided to buy a computer running XP.

Whenever I turned XP on I had to watch that "Cyborg" Blue Line moving for
a long time before I could see anything starting up on the monitor screen.

My experience with the Commodore 64 being ready to use as soon as the Power Switch was turned On, and because Booting to MS-DOS on the 486 was fairly quick, I decided to find out if I could Shorten the length of time I had to wait and watch the Blue Line moving on the screen before I would see XP starting up, figuring I could get to the Log On window sooner to use the PC.

In the C:\ Directory, I saw that the BOOT.INI file had a line: "timeout=30" .
I copied the BOOT.INI and named the copy BOOT.BAK , and then changed the "timeout=" Value to 3 in BOOT.INI ..

Recently I started thinking that My idea to change the "timeout=" value might not had been as good as I thought, as Microsoft may have had a reason for the moving line on the screen staying on as long as it did.

It might be the XP OS was doing something it needed to set up before anything else started up on that computer.

I thought I'd ask here if anyone thought I goofed when I changed that line
to a shorter time.

Or if what I did was O.K.

Thanks es 73 de Ed W9ODR . .


... There is always one more thing for Me to learn...
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Hi! Ed,

On 12/23/2020 03:12 AM, you wrote to All:

Or if what I did was O.K.

I have found an old text capture from Charles Scaglione on 01 Apr 07, although the saved message filename is "XPP_Boot_ini.txt", recommending...

[boot loader]
timeout =15
[ ... ]

Is that quote right? I can't check at the moment as both of my XP systems aren't online. Hope it helps, Ed.

Cheers,
Paul.

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In the C:\ Directory, I saw that the BOOT.INI file had a line: "timeout=30" .
I copied the BOOT.INI and named the copy BOOT.BAK , and then changed the "timeout=" Value to 3 in BOOT.INI ..

That time-out is the time you have to choose the different boot alternatives (for multi boot obviously) and also time to press F8 for safe mood and other alternatives -- but for that I think you have to create at least a second boot alternative. A copy of the first will do, if memory serves me right.

If you don't care, set the time-out to 5 or something -- just so long that you can intervene with the standard boot sequence if needed.



..

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