[MagicAndre1981]

Shadowrun, on 03 May 2012 - 01:48 PM, said:

Thanks a lot, MagicAndre. )

How long does it take to read the results and go straight to the 'bad' processes?

if you do this a lot of times you know how to read it. I've explained how to read it a bit more in my the tracing guide which I linked to explain PreSMSS.

[MagicAndre1981]

paulobao, on 03 May 2012 - 08:04 PM, said:

Please see my latest etl file after uninstall Norton AV and installing MSE and let me know if is it ok !

My link

Hi,

your Windows boots to the desktop in about 24s and is completely booted in 28s:

<timing bootDoneViaExplorer="23749" bootDoneViaPostBoot="38149"

The Notebook Performance Tuning Service (TEMPRO) causes a boot delay:

 Notebook Performance Tuning Service (TEMPRO).png (13.31K)
Number of downloads: 16

Do you really need all of the 7 TOSHIBA services?

Also entering the password causes a delay. Do you enter the password each time or do you use automatic logon?

The rest is ok. Prefetcher works well (most bars are green and orange which is good):

 readyboot.png (11.49K)
Number of downloads: 6

[MagicAndre1981]

AnthonyM1229, on 03 May 2012 - 09:26 PM, said:

Hey MagicAndre, I fixed my boot time! It wasn't any device at all that was causing my slowness...it was...

...a stupid font file!

I generated a boot log with Process Monitor, and in that log, I isolated all events with a duration of at least one second. Out of tens of thousands of total events (if I recall, correctly--maybe even hundreds of thousands, fewer than 10 lasted more than a second, and so, the offender became instantly visible. It was a leftover ttf file from a font family I installed and tested on April 13 (yeah, some unlucky Friday that turned out to be for me, ha), but then promptly uninstalled. I'm not sure why that one file got left behind...perhaps because it's encrypted (as evidenced by the green color in Explorer). Why anyone would distribute an encrypted font file, who knows...even more odd, why only encrypt one file of a set? Whatever. In any case, I guess because of the encryption, and because it's a file I downloaded in my previous install of Windows, my current install could not access the file...hmm...Process Monitor reported an "access denied" warning on the file, and a hold-up of 20 seconds, the average length of the boot delay I've been experiencing.

Wow, nice find I've never seen this. But because of the power of ProcMon you fixed it

AnthonyM1229, on 03 May 2012 - 09:26 PM, said:

I've uploaded a new trace. May you take a look at it, and tell me if there's anything more I can do to wring out even another second from my boot time? Haha. I've probably gotten as low as I can already.

Your Windows boots really fast:

<timing bootDoneViaExplorer="17319" bootDoneViaPostBoot="29119" postBootDisturbance="1800"

17s to the desktop and 19s to boot completely (only 1.8s delay caused of startup tools).

That's great for a laptop HDD (even when it is a 7200rpm laptop HDD)

[paulobao]

Hi Andre,

thanks a lot for the reply :-)
I do not need tempro!
I will try to run with less services and see what will happen!

About logon...no, I never enter a password! Is any way to speed this since I never type any password?

Regards,
paulo

This post has been edited by paulobao: 04 May 2012 - 02:25 PM

[MagicAndre1981]

If you never enter a password, do you use an empty password or have use used tools to autologon to Windows?

[paulobao]

When I bought the laptop 2 months ago I set a password and even experimented the finger print scanner built in (just for fun...).
But after a while I disabled the login password! Now what I do is to open the lid or press on to start my laptop, no passwords!
What should I check to see if there is any password ?

paulo

[MagicAndre1981]

try this tool to run an exe:

http://technet.micro...ernals/cc300361

if you enter your user account and leave the password empty does the program start correctly or not?

[paulobao]

How?

I've downloaded and unzipped!
But when I hit ShellRunas.exe nothing happens!

paulo

[AnthonyM1229]

Well, thanks for your help before, MagicAndre. I don't think I would've found ProcMon when I did, without reading through your tutorial and the associated comments.

So, my computer actually boots in less than 20 seconds...that's awesome, haha. Ever since I first discovered the Diagnostics/Performance Event log (back in my Vista days), I've normally used the boot time figures there, never knowing about the 10 second idle time or whatever, that's tacked on. Oh well--now I know

As for the very small delay by startup tools--I've always made a huge effort to keep auto loading junk away from my boot process. I only have one enabled entry in my MSconfig startup tab I may even experiment with disabling that and instead setting a scheduled task to start it shortly after I log on, because I don't absolutely need it to run at startup.

[MagicAndre1981]

paulobao, on 05 May 2012 - 02:43 PM, said:

But when I hit ShellRunas.exe nothing happens!

with commandline /reg it shoud register and when you make a rightclick on a exe you should see the entry in the context menu:

AnthonyM1229, on 06 May 2012 - 10:27 AM, said:

So, my computer actually boots in less than 20 seconds...that's awesome, haha.

this is indeed fast (and fluid ). You can send Mark an email, he always searches for strange thing users have fixed with Sysinternals tools for his series "The Case of the Unexplained"
http://channel9.msdn...ica/2011/WCL304

this font issue maybe something for his collection and maybe he shows it in one of the videos.

[LemonJuice]

Interesting topic - I wanted to test if this method would work for me and it didn't. I don't think it's bad though because my system was booting pretty fast already:

- BIOS initialization and device detecion from pressing power on button: 16 seconds (I think we don't have much influence on this anyway)
- Windows 7 startup till desktop becomes visible: 25 seconds
- about 5 seconds till everything becomes fully responsive after visible icon refreshing on the desktop

I got these times using my stopwatch and they are very consistent (unless restarting after a windows update). Considering my computer is pretty low specsed by today's standards I find these results very good. My computer: win 7 32-bit, 2GB RAM, 250GB WD 7200 HD, Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 2.10GHz, nVidia 7300 GT. The installed programs that run on startup are: Apache service, Mysql service, a small AutoHotKey script, VirtuaWin, CiDial (a small program that connects to my PPoE connection) and some other small services like PowerDVD, Realtek Audio Manager, Java updater, Nikon Message Center, Adobe Reader and Google Update. But - I run no anti-virus, I only run an AV scan on demand from time to time and I'm trying to keep my system clean.

xbootmgr took almost one hour to complete with 6 reboots and disk defrag but the boot times didn't change at all. I'm in no way criticising this tool, I just want to report that on a system that is not bloated with unwanted programs it may have no effect at all. Most probably the built-in windows prefetcher have been doing its job well automatically.

[MagicAndre1981]

run those 2 commands

xperf /tti -i bootPrep_BASE+CSWITCH_1.etl -o 01_summary_boot_start.xml -a boot
xperf /tti -i boot_BASE+CSWITCH_1.etl -o 02_summary_boot_end.xml -a boot

now open both XML files and look at the the following values in both files:

<timing bootDoneViaExplorer="100839" bootDoneViaPostBoot="179939" 

both values should be lower in the 02_summary_boot_end.xml. If not open both ETL files and look at the Ready Boot graph and if both show green and orange the cache was already fine.

[LemonJuice]

MagicAndre1981, on 18 May 2012 - 10:41 AM, said:

both values should be lower in the 02_summary_boot_end.xml.

<timing bootDoneViaExplorer="55121" bootDoneViaPostBoot="79721"

<timing bootDoneViaExplorer="20579" bootDoneViaPostBoot="-1"

So the values are lower in 02_summary_boot_end.xml, however -1 looks strange.

MagicAndre1981, on 18 May 2012 - 10:41 AM, said:

If not open both ETL files and look at the Ready Boot graph and if both show green and orange the cache was already fine.

For boot_BASE+CSWITCH_1.etl the graph is mostly green and orange with some very small amounts of blue and even smaller of blacks and reds.

For bootPrep_BASE+CSWITCH_1.etl the graph is mostly black with small amounts of blue.

I'm not sure what that means but I guess most of the cache should have been fine already.

[MagicAndre1981]

the boot is much better. Before the optimization it took 55s to boot to the desktop and now it takes 20s.

The -1 shows hat you stopped the trace to early, so Windows was not able to capture all data. Always et the 120s countdown tick down completely.

Black with blue is bad. That's why Windows took so long to boot to the desktop. Orange and green is now fine

[LemonJuice]

MagicAndre1981, on 19 May 2012 - 06:04 AM, said:

the boot is much better. Before the optimization it took 55s to boot to the desktop and now it takes 20s.

The -1 shows hat you stopped the trace to early, so Windows was not able to capture all data. Always et the 120s countdown tick down completely.

Black with blue is bad. That's why Windows took so long to boot to the desktop. Orange and green is now fine

Okay thanks, I see now how to interpret the data. But these measurements must be way off and very inaccurate because I measured boot time many times before with my stopwatch and I am sure booting to the desktop was consistently 25s and now I learn it was 55s - the difference is too big and something must have gone wrong with how xbootmgr captured all those times. Results using my stopwatch clearly show that there was no speed improvement - at least not greater than 1 second. Perhaps there was some rare coinsidence of Windows performing some update or maintenance cleanup just when xbootmgr rebooted for the first time? The results leave a good impression of speed improvement whereas there was none...

[MagicAndre1981]

The first boot captures the current state. If your Windows took 55s it shows it.

So your "feeling" and you unreliable way to measure the boot time may let you think that it is not faster.

[LemonJuice]

MagicAndre1981, on 20 May 2012 - 05:12 AM, said:

The first boot captures the current state. If your Windows took 55s it shows it.

So your "feeling" and you unreliable way to measure the boot time may let you think that it is not faster.

Well, the stopwatch certainly doesn't measure my feeling - I don't see how any other method can be more reliable (for any practical use, not theoretical) since the stopwatch shows the practical boot time, it shows what I experience as a user. But maybe xbootmgr measures the time in some other way that is unknown to me. Can you tell me what exactly is measured as bootDoneViaExplorer? When does the measurement start and when exactly does it end?

[compsavvy]

@magicandre
Need your help on this. This is a brand new sandy bridge laptop with a greater than 2 minute boot time.
The trace:
https://www.dropbox....rs%2Bpower_1.7z

And the log:

[2012/05/21-19:28:47.284] Detected Win7RTM physical (ReadyBoot) prefetcher; the SysMain service is auto-started.
[2012/05/21-19:28:47.300] Registering for auto-run with a 120000 msec delay...
[2012/05/21-19:28:47.300] Completed auto-run change.
[2012/05/21-19:28:47.331] Starting trace...
[2012/05/21-19:28:48.173] Enabled boot logging to 'C:\Windows\system32\boot_base+cswitch+drivers+power_1_km_premerge.etl'
[2012/05/21-19:31:38.349] Detected Win7RTM physical (ReadyBoot) prefetcher; the SysMain service is auto-started.
[2012/05/21-19:31:38.365] Stopping trace...
[2012/05/21-19:31:41.500] Stopped kernel logger.
[2012/05/21-19:31:41.719] Stopped user-mode logger.
[2012/05/21-19:31:41.719] The trace you are capturing "C:\Windows\system32\boot_base+cswitch+drivers+power_1.etl" may contain personally identifiable information, including but not necessarily limited to paths to files accessed, paths to registry accessed and process names. Exact information depends on the events that were logged. Please be aware of this when sharing out this trace with other people.
[2012/05/21-19:32:28.176] Merged ETL file to 'C:\Windows\system32\boot_base+cswitch+drivers+power_1.etl'
[2012/05/21-19:32:28.238] Waiting for prefetcher...
[2012/05/21-19:37:18.695] Gave up waiting for Win7RTM physical prefetcher after 300 seconds.
[2012/05/21-19:37:18.695] Could not wait for prefetcher.
[2012/05/21-19:37:18.695] Stopping trace...
[2012/05/21-19:37:18.789] Couldn't find kernel logger in active logger list.
[2012/05/21-19:37:18.789] Couldn't find user-mode logger in active logger list.
[2012/05/21-19:37:18.789] Unregistering auto-run...
[2012/05/21-19:37:18.789] Completed auto-run change.
Regards

[MagicAndre1981]

LemonJuice, on 20 May 2012 - 02:27 PM, said:

Can you tell me what exactly is measured as bootDoneViaExplorer? When does the measurement start and when exactly does it end?

The bootDoneViaExplorer key shows the duration of the boot (in milliseconds) until the start of Explorer.exe (desktop appears)

compsavvy, on 21 May 2012 - 08:40 AM, said:

@magicandre
Need your help on this. This is a brand new sandy bridge laptop with a greater than 2 minute boot time.
The trace:

Your Windows boots in 59s to the desktop and is completely booted in 91 seconds.

There is a 10s delay caused by 2 drivers:

<pnpObject name="AFD" type="Driver" activity="Load" startTime="8579" endTime="15062" duration="6483" prePendTime="6483" /> 
  <pnpObject name="SRTSP" type="Driver" activity="Load" startTime="4620" endTime="8379" duration="3759" prePendTime="3759" /> 

SRTSP semas to be Symantec and AFD = Windows Winsock driver (seems to be related to Symatec). So update Symantec and look if this fixes it.

Also the bluetooth service takes 10s to start:

serviceTransition name="Bluetooth Device Monitor" group="" transition="start" totalTransitionTimeDelta="10740" 

update or disable bluetooth. Also Symantec service is slow to start. Norton Online Backup v2.0 also takes 3.6s to start. Next teamviewer service takes over 6s to start.

Also the launch of all startup programs takes over 30s:

postBootDisturbance="32700" 

Do you really need all of this Sony applications? Try to disable some with autoruns or msconfig.exe

[LemonJuice]

MagicAndre1981, on 21 May 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

The bootDoneViaExplorer key shows the duration of the boot (in milliseconds) until the start of Explorer.exe (desktop appears)

Then it looks like the counting starts the moment "Starting Windows" text appears with the animated logo and ends when the "Welcome" screen begins to fade out, which is about 1 second before the desktop becomes visible - then the measurement is consistent with the stopwatch (20s). But what xbootmgr reported as boot time before optimization - 55s - is not true at all. My system never took that long to boot, I know for certain because I measured boot time many times before when I wanted to see how installing/uninstalling certain programs impacted the boot time, and of course before the optimization I did a few more measurements so that I could see any improvement. It is therefore impossible that my measurements were off - certainly not by such a huge margin. Either xbootmgr must have measured the time in a wrong way or maybe there was a rare coinsidence of windows doing some extra unusual tasks, updates, optimizations, etc. - just when xbootmgr did its first reading.

This post has been edited by LemonJuice: 21 May 2012 - 01:41 PM