Trace Windows 7 boot/shutdown/hibernate/standby/resume issues

[athlonaces]

OK! Solved the issue!

Conclusion:

The issue was with my Steelseries Xai Mouse. Apparently using it on a USB 3.0 enabled MOBO will cause the boot up to be delayed, even if I plug them into a usb 2.0 port.

I have to choose between having usb 3.0 and 40 secs boot up time or USB 2.0 and 12 secs boot up time.

Thank you MagicAndre, you're awesome.

[MagicAndre1981]

Thank you MagicAndre, you're awesome.

You're welcome

[doveman]

I moved my HDD to a SATAIII port to see if that would help.

I also disabled the TVService to test but strangely, I had a boot of 67s before doing this, then the next boot it was 84s and then 72s.

I've uploaded the traces for both (with TVService is _1.zip, without is _2.zip) along with the extracted summaries, if you take a look and see how they compare to previously please.

boot_BASE+CSWITCH+POWER_1.zip https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESOC1hVklTRVg1bFk/edit?usp=sharing

summary_boot (TVService).xml https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESNmc1QzVQN0daVGM/edit?usp=sharing

boot_BASE+CSWITCH+POWER_2.zip https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESRU91RHhWZE5IWGs/edit?usp=sharing

summary_boot2 (No TVService).xml https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESNmJsR1FaeldKY0E/edit?usp=sharing

OK, I finally got myself a SSD and would appreciate if you could take a look at the trace to compare and check it's eliminated the problems I had due to the drive being busy. The above files are still available if you need to check them to see the problems I had.

From the summary, I see

<timing bootDoneViaExplorer="14476" bootDoneViaPostBoot="53476" osLoaderDuration="641"

which still seems a bit long for a SSD, so maybe you can advise me as to what is making it so?

I don't know if it's normal but testing my SSD (Samsung 840 Evo 256GB) with Samsung Magician with RAPID enabled, it shows Read (up to 540): 537, Write (up to 520): 878 (that's due to RAPID, before I enabled it, it was around 502), Random Read (up to 97000): 66151, Random Write (up to 66000): 47698). So the Read and Write speeds seem OK but the IOPS seem rather low.

boot_BASE+CSWITCH+POWER_1 (SSD).7z: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESUjBQcVFtczNIUFU/edit?usp=sharing

summary_boot (SSD).xml: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESdVJXaG1NY2xwSVU/edit?usp=sharing

[MagicAndre1981]

boot is much better. But I see that the services.exe has some high CPU usage.

Run this command instead to also trace CPU usage:

xbootmgr -trace boot -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+POWER+LATENCY+DISPATCHER -stackwalk profile+CSwitch+ReadyThread -resultPath C:\TEMP

[doveman]

OK, uploaded here:

boot_BASE+CSWITCH+POWER+LATENCY+DISPATCHER_1.7z: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESMVpRclM4amMwajA/edit?usp=sharing

summary_boot (CPU).xml: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESb1pwTmh6STJLS0k/edit?usp=sharing

[MagicAndre1981]

this time the high CPU usage of the services.exe is gone but you still run so many tools (Avast and Comodo, why both for example?) at startup. Reduce that number or use hibernation most of the time.

[doveman]

this time the high CPU usage of the services.exe is gone but you still run so many tools (Avast and Comodo, why both for example?) at startup. Reduce that number or use hibernation most of the time.

OK, that's good I guess (although makes me wonder why it was high before).

Avast is Antivirus and Comodo is Firewall. I'll try booting without the other stuff though and see what it goes down to.

I don't use hibernation at all but use standby most of the time.

[MagicAndre1981]

I use always hibernation and only reboot after the patchday. So Windows resumes very fast all the time.

[doveman]

OK, I've done a clean boot now, although MSI Afterburner still loaded for some reason but I doubt that added much to the time.

bootDoneViaExplorer="15139" seems fine but

bootDoneViaPostBoot="35839" seems a bit long

clean_boot_BASE+CSWITCH+POWER+LATENCY+DISPATCHER_1.7z:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESRUpwMzRTZF9pODQ/edit?usp=sharing

clean_boot_xbootmgr.log:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESanZObmNNNnhET1U/edit?usp=sharing

[MagicAndre1981]

largest delay is still in loading all startup tools. MSI Afterburner is loaded via scheduled task and scheduled task run with low priority and so they start slower.

[doveman]

largest delay is still in loading all startup tools. MSI Afterburner is loaded via scheduled task and scheduled task run with low priority and so they start slower.

OK but I'm fairly sure that Afterburner was the only thing I didn't stop loading (due to it loading via scheduled task, which msconfig doesn't handle) so does that account for all the delay?

[MagicAndre1981]

Avast is also doing virus updates and this also slows down boot a bit.

[doveman]

Before your post, I did another boot with the Afterburner task disabled and I also ran the Avast task manually in the hope this would prevent it needing to run again when booting. It didn't make any difference as far as I can see though.

summary_boot (without Afterburner).xml:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1fDI89phEESWXFGX3lZdjJORk0/edit?usp=sharing

It may be that because I have My Documents on a separate drive (HDD not SSD) that this slows Windows down when doing the post boot, although I doubt the drive has had enough time to spindown between POST and post boot. I'm not sure why it would need to access My Documents during post boot but you never know with Windows!

[MagicAndre1981]

yes, this can also cause it.

Use hibernation like I do and you don't have to care about slow logon times.

[doveman]

Or just use Standby like I do and it's even quicker

It's just occassionally I do have to reboot and I wanted to make that as quick as possible and that 35s postboot seems rather long for a SSD but it's actually pretty usable before that I think, so whatever it's doing the fact that I'm booting from an SSD seems to mostly negate any effect.

I'll have to try disabling the Avast tasks and see if they are causing the long postboot. I could understand My Documents being on the HDD causing some delay if all my programs were loading, as I'm sure some of them store their data in My Documents rather than Program Data but even then it shouldn't take much time to load a few 100KB config files. With startup programs disabled though, I can't think of anything that Windows would need to access from My Documents at boot. Maybe it has to touch it to populate the location internally but that shouldn't take long.

I'll have to check my RAMDisk doesn't load during the selective startup too but I can't think that it would with everything disabled. I point my temp folders to that though, so I'm not sure where Windows would put them if it can't find the drive or if this could be causing a delay, so I'll have to test by pointing them to the SSD to make sure.