Large number of files in the Windows folder affects WM5 boot up time. Why?

[Ionized]

Recently I installed NetFront 3.3 to the SD card on my Dopod 818 Pro (using the latest official ROM) and I noticed a significant slow down in the boot up time (around 3 min). The only things I found that were installed on the device's main memory were JV-Lite2 demo and a large number of small HTML help files (about 84 of them) in the Windows folder. I doubt it was a memory problem because I still had more than 20MB of Storage Memory before I tried deleting them later.

I first deleted the JV-Lite2 demo and there was no change in the boot up time. Next, I navigated to the Windows folder in an attempt to delete the help files. At this point in time, I noticed the loading time was 3 to 4 times slower than usual when File Explorer was listing all the files in the Windows folder. (By the way, sorting of files was never changed, i.e. by Name.) I went ahead to delete all the nf33*.* files and as expected, the boot up time was back to normal (about 1 min plus). Hope this finding may help those who complained about slow opening of the Windows folder after installing NetFront.

Anyway, my questions are:

1) Why does the number of files in the Windows folder affect the boot up time? It just doesn't make sense to me...

2) Are there any known applications that instruct WM5 to navigate to and/or list the Windows folder in the background upon start up?

3) Or could this be a default behavior of WM5? If yes, any registry tweaks to disable it?

Thank you.

[GuyGascard]

Actually the boot up time depend of the number of program that need to be started at boot time. you can look at these programs in the windows\startup directory . the more programs . the more time to start.

[Ionized]

I understand that the number of programs required to load upon start up will also slow down the boot time. But it's a different issue I discussed earlier. By the way, I've only 6 shortcuts in my Windows\Startup folder.

The problem was I installed only one program, that is, NetFront version 3.3, and this one program doubled my boot time prior to the installation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but NetFront does not load itself, plug-ins or any other extensions by default during boot up. I'm pretty sure NetFront doesn't even need all those 84 help files to be loaded when running.

Actually, you can try out this little experiment to see if a bloated Windows folder (regardless of size) will in fact affect WM5 boot up time or not. Create about 100 empty text files and copy them into the Windows folder of your Prophet's main memory. Do not copy them into a sub folder of Windows. 100 blank files will probably take up only a few kb of memory space for the file structures. Make 200-400 files if you're using a faster PDA. Do a soft reset and watch your device choke during start up.

Please be reminded to do a backup just in case your device refuses to leave the Windows Mobile splash screen.

So... back to my questions. Any clues?

[anonimo]

Maybe something to do with RAM defragmenting or whatever WM5 does to improve runtime performance?

[Ionized]

Hmm... I'm afraid memory chips in PDAs do not work in the same ways as harddisks in our desktops.

[anonimo]

Yes I know but I read somewhere that WM5 performs some RAM management to improve access times... I don't know what that means but it could be that since you are putting a lot of small files in RAM then they get moved at boot time.

[Rayan]

I bet it has something to do with the Filesystem our devices use... It's not very efficient handling lots of small size files.

So, in conclusion, you are saying that if I delete all the "useless" help files in the Windows directory my device will speed up it's boot up?

What I noticed is that if I do a Hard Reset and skip the Extended rom stuff, the boot takes just under 1 minute to complete. Even after installing all my fav apps.

Peace!
Rayan

[faria]

I bet it has something to do with the Filesystem our devices use... It's not very efficient handling lots of small size files.

So, in conclusion, you are saying that if I delete all the "useless" help files in the Windows directory my device will speed up it's boot up?

What I noticed is that if I do a Hard Reset and skip the Extended rom stuff, the boot takes just under 1 minute to complete. Even after installing all my fav apps.

Peace!
Rayancompare this to the window folder;

1 jar with 100 beans ---could be heinz /......hehe
another jar with 200 beans.

witch one takes you longer to count?

the same apllies to files in any folder ,the more files im a folder the longer it takes to enumerate them.
regards.

[Doodle]

It is also the ROM. I just installed the new Qtek S200 rom, and the boottime is dramatically shorter, and no it is not because the pda is still empty, because I first put all files and programs back. With my Dopod Rom the system took minutes to boot, and I even had to put it on mains to prevent it from hanging on me.

[Ionized]

If I delete the large number of empty files from the Windows folder in my experiment mentioned previously, I notice the boot time is faster but not as fast as before I started the experiment. If I do a full backup now (using Spb Backup), hard reset and then restore, I will see a better improvement in the boot time. Does this mean that the files are never destroyed after deletion in WM5? File Explorer still counts but hides the files? WM5 is a really puzzling OS...

Anyway my conclusion is, the more files you have in the Windows folder, the longer WM5 takes to boot up.

[JKR]

mamaich discussed this some time back.
Regards,
Jason