[ origin: http://forum.sysinternals.com/topic30672.html ] Thank you, Andre. That's an interesting tutorial you've put together there … completely new to me! So I installed the Performance Tools (from the 8.1 distro) on the old platter disk, configured Windows Auto Logon, and issued the boot log command: xbootmgr -trace boot -resultPath C:\ I omitted the -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER because it would error out although I had already increased the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger\ReadyBoot\MaxFileSize Parameter to 100 MB. 05.08.2014 17:30 3.641.720 boot_BASE+CSWITCH_1.cab 05.08.2014 17:30 93.323.264 boot_BASE+CSWITCH_1.etl 05.08.2014 17:36 143.793 boot_BASE+CSWITCH_1.summary.XML The timing node in the XML summary has the following attributes (values in milliseconds): bootDoneViaExplorer="37886"bootDoneViaPostBoot="59686"osLoaderDuration="2688" postBootRequiredIdleTime="10000"postBootDisturbance="11800" pnpBootStartStartTime="110"pnpBootStartEndTime="1991"pnpBootStartDuration="1882" pnpSystemStartStartTime="5039"pnpSystemStartEndTime="21405"pnpSystemStartDuration="16365"At just 60 seconds, this reads much better than what the eventvwr has to say, which is more than 100 seconds. Maybe that's because of the Auto logon? The following Quote from the site you linked to seems to confirm this assumption: »If auto-logon is not enabled, the time that elapses while the logon screen is displayed affects the measured boot time in a trace.« Interval data: interval name="PreSMSS" startTime="0" endTime="21416" duration="21416"> interval name="SMSSInit" startTime="21416" endTime="28522" duration="7106"> interval name="WinlogonInit" startTime="28522" endTime="33735" duration="5214"> interval name="ExplorerInit" startTime="33735" endTime="37886" duration="4151"> interval name="PostExplorerPeriod" startTime="37886" endTime="59686" duration="21800"> interval name="TraceTail" startTime="59686" endTime="165778" duration="106092"> Maybe this is not too bad after all for a laptop running a 2010 Intel dual-core i5-430 and a 1 TB 5400 U/min platter disk? I just read your tutorial page and the first two pages of comments, so I'm not aware of what might have been said in this huge thread … Anyway, guess I need to repeat that test on the SSD copy of my system. Have already run it once, but without auto logon, which I think (see above) skews the result.