Speeding Up System Boot - What Hardware Devices should I Disable ?

Each user uses (or doesn't use) devices differently,depending on the system setup. Nonetheless, some classes of devices are more commonly disabled than others.Knowing which ones will help you make a decision as to what devices you should disable.The following classes of devices are frequently disabled:

To quickly determine the status of a device, check out the icon next to its name. All devices that are disabled have a red X over the icon. All devices that have a question mark or an explanation point on them are not set up correctly or are having problems. All devices with none of the above additions to the icon are runningññand doing so without any problems.

Network Adapters
Especially on Notebook computers,there are often more than one network device. Disabling the network devices that you do not use will definitely save you some booting time.

Fire wire
If you have 1394 connections,otherwise known as fire wire,you might consider disabling them. Unless you are using your fire wire port to connect your digital
video recorder to your computer,or have other external fire wire devices,you have no need to have this device enabled.

Modems
Do you have a broadband connection? If so,then consider disabling your modem. If you rarely use it,disable it. If you ever need to use it again,just re-enable it.

Multimedia devices
Your computer has lots of multimedia devices. Take a look at the
ìSound,video,and game controllersîsection in Device Manager. You will find a lot of device drivers that are loaded during your boot.Some are used by all users,but others will find a few that they do not use.For example,I do not use my game port or my MIDI device,so I disabled both of those.

PCMCIA
If you are a laptop user,consider disabling your PCMCIA card controller, located under ìPCMCIA adapters."The PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association ) slot is a special expansion slot that is rarely used today on laptops except for wireless and wired network cards and card reader attachments for compact flash and other solid state memory cards.Most laptops now have built-in network adapters and some even have built-in wireless adapters.If you do not use your PCMCIA adapter, it is yet another device that can be safely disabled.

Caution
Do not disable any hardware devices that are located under the Disk Drives, Computer, Display Adapters, IDE Disk Controllers, and the System sections (except for the system speaker) because these hardware devices are critical to the operation of your computer.