[Farcough]

Hello, my PC is taking up to 4-5 mins to be fully ready after a boot. I have had a look through it and there seems to be a lot of stuff loading at the start, I have tried removing some of them but when I tried to run another trace I got the error message "Could not register for callback at the next boot", even after reinstalling the tool. Do you have any idea why it cant register now?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Dropbox trace file

have pm'd password

Edit: The error message in the log is:

[2012/10/30-10:53:11.547] Performance Analyzer Power Transition Performance Testing Utility (Microsoft® Windows® Performance Analyzer) Version 6.2.9200 - © 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
[2012/10/30-10:53:11.549] Detected Win7RTM physical (ReadyBoot) prefetcher; the SysMain service is auto-started.
[2012/10/30-10:53:11.549] Registering for auto-run with a 120000 msec delay...
[2012/10/30-10:53:11.549] Failed to open auto-run reg key with 0x00000002.
[2012/10/30-10:53:11.549] Could not register for callback at next boot.

This post has been edited by Farcough: 30 October 2012 - 04:54 AM

[MagicAndre1981]

our disk is busy during boot. I can see that Avast causes it. So remove it and try other tools. My favorite is NOD32.

Also cleanup your tools that launch at start (All the ASUS tools, Pando Networks Media Booster and others).

Next install the hotfixes from here:

http://www.msfn.org/...howtopic=152622

and run the optimization from here:

http://www.msfn.org/...howtopic=140262

[luca72c]

Hello, i find this topic really VERY interesting and i hope someone among you good guys can help me with a very annoying issue i am experiencing in my system, that is driving me mad and that i could not solve in a month of tries. I own an HTPC based on the following configuration:
AMD Phgenom II X4 945 CPU
MSI 990FXA-GD80 M/B
8Gb Corsair XMS3 DDR (2x4Gb)
Corsair AX-650 PSU
Samsung 256Gb 830 SATA SSD (2 partitions, system + data), AHCI SATA mode
Seagate 3Tb Barracuda SATA HDD with GPT table
ATI HD 5750 video card (2 displays attached)
Terratec Cinergy DVB-S2 card
Hauppauge HVR-2200 DVB-T card
Silverstone LC-16m case with Imon VFD + Imon Pad remote and USB card reader
Internal serial port, 1394 and eSATA ports enabled
Logitech USB Webcam, USB speakers and USB G110 illuminated keyboard
Toshiba laser mouse
Windows 7 x64 sp1, windows Media Center + DVBLink TV source, MST and various other programs.
Hibernation disabled
No overclok
I used this HTPC with much satisfaction from nearly 1 year, never experiencing an issue: i used to keep it in S3 mode 24/7 and it always got out from S3 state to record TV programs without any problem.
I installed the second drive, the 3Tb Seagate Barracuda, the first week of september. Then a day between the firsts of october i installed Mediaportal to give it a try; fearing system modifications by that software, i saved a backup image in my second drive. After a pair of days (or maybe at that time i noticed it for the first time), the issue has started.
The issue consists in a strange system freeze when the HTPC tries to wake up from S3: when the HTPC tries to exit S3 state the case led gets on, the HDD led blinks once or twice and then fans start running loudly and the HTPC freezes BEFORE the display can show any image (it remains black and goes to power saving mode) - power led on and HDD led off. No blue screen (the display is off). No memory dump. Keyboard's leds off. No manual crash dump possible. All i can do is keep power switch pressed until system complete shutdown.
But the really strange thing is that it happens ONLY once or twice a day, in the rest of the times the HTPC gets to wake up from S3 normally without any issue: it usually wakes up from S3 a number of times per day (7/8 minimum), but only 1/2 times the freeze issue happens (more often early in the morning or around twilight, seldom in other time slots)... Also, when on, the HTPC runs flawlessly as ever.
Thinking MP was guilty in some way, i restored the backup image but unfortunately the issue didn't disappear! So MP was no to blame... something different had happened to my PC...
I think you can understand that such an issue is really serious for an HTPC, because it makes it really untrustable for scheduled recording work: often recordings fail because of the HTPC freezing when it tries to resume... my wife is really sad about it...
Trying to solve the issue, i made the following:
running memtest and video card memory test - no error found
change nearly every MST options - no effect
reading carefully W7's event viewer logs after and between freezes - nothing found that could clarify the issue
changing all ACPI and power related BIOS options (C3 support, EUR 2013, CPU phases, DDR phases, shadowing, etc...) - no effect
updating BIOS and all drivers - no effect
disabling cool'n'quiet - no effect
unplugging Segate 3Tb HDD - no effect
unplugging all external and internal USB devices (except mouse) - no effect
uninstalling ATI video card and running with legacy drivers - no effect
disabling embedded Ethernet adapter - no effect
unplugging the second display (an HDTV) - no effect
tried to get a manual crash dump - not possible as when the issue happens the HTPC is freezed
Those tries took very long to be made, because every time i have to wait all day long for the issue to happen: it NEVER takes place if i wake up the HTPC after a few seconds sleep, seems like it needs at least a few hours of S3 state to take place. Unfortunatly this makes tracing the issue really difficult.
I got several tracings using the method described in this thread, the HTPC wakes up normally in that case but i can find nothing that can be blamed for the issue... maybe i don't know well what to look for... what i noticed is that if i try to trace using the DRIVERS flag, a blue screen appears at wake up (that blames hidusb.sys) if i keep my USB keyboard (an illuminated device) or USB speakers (that have media controls) plugged; if i unplug all USB devices the system exits S3 without blue screens and the tracing is succesful. BUT even this way after a day of sleep the issue takes place as well. No blue screen anyway if i avoid using the DRIVERS flag, even with all USB devices plugged. This is my last trace file, taken with USB devices unplugged and DRIVERS flag, so that you can have a look if you like to help me: https://rapidshare.c...%2BPOWER_1.etl.
At this time i really don't know what i could do more: i reached my PC skills limit... a software related or W7 issue? An hardware compatibility problem? A power related misfunction? A background Windows update changed system behaviour? Maybe solar magnetic field increasing? I don't know if there is a more efficent way to debug the S3 resume and find out what really my HTPC is doing in the exact time it freezes, if you can suggest me anything it would be REALLY very appreciated! Please help me to find out what the hell happened in that SAD october days!!!
Thanks in advance and forgive my long post: i wanted to describe well my problem to help you analyze the issue...

This post has been edited by luca72c: 06 November 2012 - 05:59 PM

[MagicAndre1981]

xbootmgr is only useful for detecting perf issues and not freezes.

try a different PSU and look for a BIOS update

[luca72c]

MagicAndre1981, on 07 November 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

xbootmgr is only useful for detecting perf issues and not freezes.

try a different PSU and look for a BIOS update

I updated my BIOS 2 times last month and now i have the latest version, but no update was useful. My PSU is one of the best you can find on the market, i bought it to avoid this kind of issues... what else could i buy? Seasonic? But my PSU actually IS Seasonic-manufactured!
I understand what you say about xbootmgr, but as long as you know is there some other tool that can debug this kind of issues?
Thank you anyway!

[MagicAndre1981]

to detect freezes you must create a dump of the complete system and analyze it with the Debugger, but this is very hard.

[luca72c]

MagicAndre1981, on 07 November 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

to detect freezes you must create a dump of the complete system and analyze it with the Debugger, but this is very hard.

Could you help me in doing this? I don't know how to do it... how could i create a dump of the system while resuming from S3 if the PC freezes?

[MagicAndre1981]

http://msdn.microsof...v=vs.85%29.aspx

But I have no experience in analyzing such dump to get the cause of freezes.

[luca72c]

MagicAndre1981, on 08 November 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:

http://msdn.microsof...v=vs.85%29.aspx

But I have no experience in analyzing such dump to get the cause of freezes.

I tried the described manual crash dump method, but when the PC tries to resume it hangs before keyboard is activated and at that freeze point the CTRL+BLCSCR keypresses are useless...

[MagicAndre1981]

I have no real idea. Contact the Microsoft support to get support about your issue.

[luca72c]

MagicAndre1981, on 09 November 2012 - 01:34 AM, said:

I have no real idea. Contact the Microsoft support to get support about your issue.

OK, thanks anyway!

[dmntd]

Hello MagicAndre1981, I can see you are into figuring out issues with boot and shutdown. Well, I have a frustrating situation with my shutdown, It is something that I installed but I don't change my installs very often so it confuses me on WHAT could be the issue.

I ran the tests you suggested and what I came back with was something I can't read into very well. Can you take a look? I think it has something to do with either Utorrent or maybe even STEAM..I can't figure it out. report Pm'd the pass.

This post has been edited by dmntd: 26 December 2012 - 05:00 PM

[MagicAndre1981]

 <timing shutdownTime="17918" servicesShutdownDuration="5069">

Windows takes 18s to shutdown. Stopping the services takes 5s:

Here I can only see that the services.exe takes over 4s to close. And I think it is the Skype service:

 services.png (25.58K)
Number of downloads: 18

Also Superfetch takes some time to stop.

Closing all running programs in your user session takes over 9s:

<sessionShutdown sessionID="1" startTime="322" endTime="9775" duration="9453">

Here is steam the cause:

<shutdownProcess name="Steam.exe" shutdownStartTime="4108" shutdownEndTime="8317" processEndTime="8310" shutdownDuration="4209"

steam takes over 4s to close.

[adnedarn]

Hello! Thanks so much for your great help to everyone! Please allow me to join in the fun. =)
I have installed the hotfixes you have listed, installed WPT, and attempted to run the verbosereadyboot thing that reboots 7 times... Although, that fails after rebooting the 2nd or 3rd time and says it can't wait for...prefetcher? anymore and gives up. I've tried it twice. So, no I am here to see if you could provide me with some personalized help to speed my bootup time! I have uploaded my trace file and PMd you the link and hopefully haven't missed out any details that I'm supposed to give you.
Thanks so much!
Andrew

This post has been edited by adnedarn: 05 January 2013 - 06:33 PM

[MagicAndre1981]

about he error check this:

http://social.msdn.m...cf-f0ca25b4b33a

Your boot is slow because the disk is busy all the time. 1st, check if your WDC WD3200JS runs in AHCI mode and next, try to uninstall ZoneAlarm. Also don't install the AMD CCC, it is a .net application and is slow to start. I can also see that the QBCFMonitorService and Windows Image Acquisition services (stisvc) start very slowly.

This maybe also related to the high activity.

[adnedarn]

Thanks! I'll look into the errors thing and see about re-running it. You are correct- my HDD stays active for a long time when I boot up.... I've moved my HDD to AHCI in BIOS, uninstalled ZoneAlarm, uninstalled AMD CCC, and disabled QBFMonitorService. I left Windows IMage Acquisition service since I do use my scanner/webcam/cameras often. (If I understand that service correctly I need those). Startup still seems super slow I've sent a new trace.
THANK YOU!
Andrew

This post has been edited by adnedarn: 06 January 2013 - 10:53 AM

[MagicAndre1981]

yes, boot is still slow. What I can see is that the enumeration of the IDE drives takes over 10s:

Quote

pnpObject name="PCIIDE\IDEChannel\4+3803e7e3+0+1" type="Device" activity="Enum" startTime="362" endTime="11862" duration="11501" prePendTime="0" description="IDE Channel" friendlyname="ATA Channel 1" />

Which IDE devices do you have connected?

The disk is still the issue. It is busy during boot nearly all the time. Remove as much as tools as you can.

A possible solution would be using a SSD as systemdrive and use the HDD only to store data on it.

[adnedarn]

I see, Maybe I changed the sata settings for the wrong controller, I will double check (there are two on this motherboard). By tools do you mean spyware/antivirus/optimization stuff? I don't think there are anymore on here. I only had zonealarm and malwarebytes- malwarebytes I had removed a few days ago. For hardware I have a 1 dvd drive, 1 dvd rw, 1 floppy drive, 1 sata HDD, video card, audio card.
Thanks,
Andrew


Yep, I activated it on the wrong sata plugs.... So I did the other and got BSOD. Maybe I'll try plugging the drive into the other sata plug and see what that does.

This post has been edited by adnedarn: 06 January 2013 - 01:14 PM

[MagicAndre1981]

I mean remove all programs that you don't really need. If you need the all, buy a SSD. Your HDD is too slow to handle them all.

[intzepatorii]

Hi Magic and many thanks for helping us improving our computers!
I found you when searching for ways to reduce the boot time and I did it! from about 120 secs to about 30 secs... (I load avast after all services and I made also a few similar tweaks for Teamviewer etc.).

I still have two issues though:

1. I can't reduce the time needed for resuming from hibernation.... It's resuming in about 70 secs now...
First of all I had about 180 secs, then I stopped the superfetch service and got 70 secs... I made a few tweaks thanks to you and I re-enabled superfetch and managed to keep the 70 secs time.
My hibernation file is half of RAM (4/2=2 GB). and RAM in use is 1.5 GB when I put it to hibernate. I tried also the 100% and 75% size and the difference in resuming speed is pretty low if among them.
I still think it's too much time though only to resume from hibernation and first of all I would like to know only if it's possible to reduce it.

2. I don't have any event in the event viewer - windows - diagnostics performance - operational...They stopped logging one year ago, I cleared them, did all sort of things I found out on the internet but without success...
Also when opening the event file from Windows Prefetch/Ready boot folder it says I have some events lost and I should run some help query in the commander prompt (pretty useless), then the program is having a problem and it closes.
I had some time ago several partitions of my drive formatted by Mac Os and and LinuxOpenSuse, maybe they interfered with the MBR and that's why the problems? The respective time I was using a GRUB 2 bootloader.
In order to hibernate again I gave up both of them and everything is formatted in NTFS now.

My computer is a MSI G41M4-F MB with Intel G41 chipset, E5700 DualCore processor, 4 GB of RAM, 1 TB Sata II, Realtek Network/Sound, GeForce GT 7300.

Thank you in advance!