Track Loading time

[manimatters]

Does anyone know of an application which tracks how many seconds it takes for an application to "load"? I searched around but couldnt find any, it shouldnt be that complex a task that nobodys tried it!!

[Ralf Maximus]

The difficulty, as I see it, is that without the application's cooperation it's hard to tell when the thing is "loaded".  For instance, FireFox starts pretty quick -- if you just watch for the .exe to appear in task manager.  But then it spends many seconds loading add-ins, initializing the renderer, detecting proxy, etc.  By the time it's ready to use, the Windows executive has long forgotten about it.

Trying to out-clever an app and detect things like "window is visible" or "CPU usage near zero" are mostly doomed to fail, since most modern programs are multi-threaded with display functions separated from the core functionality.

I'm sure it's possible to write such a utility (and I'd surely like to have one too) but it'd be a complex undertaking.

Unless I'm missing something simple like the DetectApplicationReady Windows API?

[nontroppo]

Process monitor will give you detailed times of all file I/O, filter for your application. But it won't tell you what the user may perceive - what does loading mean - first display of the UI, or first ability to usefully interact?

http://www.microsoft.../processmonitor.mspx

If you want to measure how many seconds until a UI is shown, the best way is to use screenrecording software and then use frame times to know from when an icon was depressed to when a UI is shown. This is much more precise than sitting with a stopwatch. There are also ways to measure change on screen, but I don't know of any apps to do that, only testing frameworks.

[f0dder]

Iirc there's an API call that'll tell you whether an application is input ready (has created a window?), but I can't for the life of me remember the name, nor find it in PlatformSDK. And it's not what you're looking for, anyway, since it's no guarantee that the application is actually ready & done loading.

What you want can't be done generically & reliable.

[manimatters]

I guess "CPU usage near zero" would be a good bet. i mean, the program should record how much time it takes windows to settle down (cpu and hard disk activity going back to normal). Wat do u say?