Edit: Old post I know, but it was on the front of the topic page, so please don't flame for my bump.
While the following doesn't really address the changes mentioned, a 7 minute startup is obscene. Even in a fully spawned world with a few dozen custom scripts, my server load time is about 25 seconds. And that's on my old server: 1.2Ghz with 1Gb RAM. That system is dedicated to running servers, so there's not much competing for resources, and much of my speed can be attributed to that, but even still... Here's what I do.
Let's begin by altering your process priority: Free, Easy, Very effective
Right click the shortcut to the RunUO server, and choose properties.
Change the target to:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start /high C:\RunUO\RunUO.exe
and "Start in" to this:
C:\Windows\System32
That should have doubled your speed.
IM software will hijack your thread priority, so disable them or the setting will only last a few minutes. This should massively reduce world saves as well.
Allocated Memory Heaps: Free, not too hard, a little effective.
Many people advocate allotting memory with a heapsize argument from the prompt (XP and Vista only), but the server doesn't require too much, so the results from that are negligable. This can't be done if starting in a high priority mode from a shortcut (you'd allocate memory to cmd.exe, not server), so you'd have to write a batch file for it. Not really worth your time unless you really need to squeeze every last bit of preformance out of it.
RAMDISK Execution: Free, pain in the ass, very effective in some circumstances
Load your server to a RAM Drive on system startup, and execute from there to reduce disk access times. Especially useful if your sending server stats to a website in realtime, accessing XML files from within scripts etc, as it completely eliminates the disk read/write latency. Don't forget, any changes made have to be copied back to the hard disk before shutdown or they will be lost. Batchfiles on startup and shutdown can do that for you easily. Still, I tend to forget to copy back my modifications, and that's not an option here.
SolidState Flash: May cost a bit, easy, effective for busy servers with lots of people
Alternatively, run your server from flash memory if you think disk access is the bottleneck (not likely, but try it). This only works from quality flash memory, not the 1GB for $1.99 USB drives. USB drives will work well for this if they're FAST, so look at reviews before getting one if you go this route. Cheap ones never cut it, but if you've got a good one it's worth a try. I like the
Kingston HyperX drives. They're a bit pricey for the capacity, but ungodly fast in the world of USB flash memory. The real advantage to this shows when you have 50+ players on your shard at a time. Also great for running fast web servers. If you've got deep pockets, SSDs are better still, but at $300 for 30GB, the USB comes close enough.
Hope that helps.