Slash your windows boot time

[Josh]

Soluto, in short, lets users quickly and easily customize the Windows boot process by breaking applications into three categories: Ones that are completely unnecessary to the boot process, ones that are potentially removable, and ones that are absolutely necessary to boot Windows. Soluto collects anonymous user data to give you an idea of what other users do with their applications, so if you have a piece of software that lots of other people pause during startup, you're presented with a pie chart telling you what percentage pauses, and what percentage keeps it in the boot process.

In this latest beta version (1.1.10960,) you can instantly kill Soluto after your PC has started up, search for- and filter applications by name.

Soluto Homepage

Fileforum Source

[hpearce]

I reviewed the original beta, and while it did tell me the reported seconds each app took, most info was no surprise to me nor was the breakdown of those programs I could manipulate. On the whole, the slowdown soluto added to the startup led me to uninstall it given how uninformative it really was.
Possibly good for non-geek users mostly.

[4wd]

Here, it just didn't work - yes, I could select a few programs to start delayed but then on reboot when they still hadn't started after 5 minutes....

So it got uninstalled.  (The same thing also happened with the previous beta.)

For people who might like to do it the Microsoft way: How to speed up your boot process under Vista or Windows 7

[Curt]

also read IainB's Measuring PC boot-up time by component - and tweaking it with Soluto

[nudone]

I've found that booting up quicker it just a case of delaying a few obvious programs. I gave Soluto a try and then replaced it for Startup Delayer: http://www.r2.com.au...&show=startdelay

Simply delaying/staggering a few temperamental programs made the start up process a lot more reliable and smoother (I used to have problems with Digsby, Networx, File Hamster and probably a few others).

Startup Delayer will show you the queue of your delayed programs as they ready to start; allowing you to skip completely, start immediately or even pause their startup.

p.s.
I even use it for starting up Firefox (minimised) so when I sit down at my computer each morning Firefox is waiting for me (I hate how long FF takes to open compared with IE). Startup Delayer also has a very nice gui, I think.

[Curt]

The biggest advantage Soluto has, over Startup Delayer and Chameleon Startup Manager and (all?) others is, the ability to delay a hole bunch of system files. No other program, that I know of, will offer this feature.

But another problem is, that the user has nothing to say about the length or order of the various delays, but can merely chose between 'delay' or 'pause'. Nor can the user order what program to start all last. The absence of these features is why I have ditched Soluto, and still am using R2 Startup Delayer.

[Darwin]

But another problem is, that the user has nothing to say about the length or order of the various delays, but can merely chose between 'delay' or 'pause'. Nor can the user order what program to start all last. The absence of these features is why I have ditched Soluto, and still am using R2 Startup Delayer

-Curt (November 02, 2010, 04:05 AM)

This disappointed me as well when I tried Soluto a few months ago. I'm intrigued by the ability to delay system files, but not enough to prompt me to try Soluto again (I run WinPatrol and am very content with it), for one reason because I found removing it a bit of a chore. I also recall being underwhelmed with it in practice, my objections being in line with what hpearce experienced.

[justice]

Looks great in theory until you realise you shouldn't even have to worry about it, because the OS should already do it for you.

[Curt]

So far Soluto is freeware and maybe it will stay free. However, if you look at their About-page, there is a list of investors. Serious inverstors. I *guess* the product to make money will be the coming PC Genome - whatever kind of program that will turn out to become.

But what I really am hoping for is a Soluto PRO version with the features I spoke about in my previous post, making me able to adjust the startup in micro details, down to tenths of a second, in a fixed order. I would gladly pay to have such an option.

[f0dder]

Heh, looking at the main product site I have absolutely no clue what the program does - couple that with the amount of buzzwords, and it's something that I'm very very wary (and weary!) of.

Looks great in theory until you realise you shouldn't even have to worry about it, because the OS should already do it for you.

-justice (November 02, 2010, 08:44 AM)

Indeed - but Windows does start a fair amount of stuff that a lot of people don't need. There's been a lot of work done by the kernel and "core OS" guys to reduce boot time, and it's being done on a lot of different levels; there's been some pretty interesting blogs and videos/interviews with Mark Russinovich on Win7 kernel goodness.

If all Soluto does now is look at boot time, then oh well - whatever. Especially if it's just by disabling and/or delaying load of services and startup apps. Sure, the graphics in the first post are pretty, and the idea of leveraging flock wisdom (I wonder what data exactly they're collecting...) is nice-ish. But disabling/delaying is nothing revolutionary.

And apart from HTPCs, is bootup time really that important? My workstation is usually turned on most of the day (goes to standby if I'm away from it for more than 10-15 minutes, shut off if I'm away for several hours). My laptop does standby or hibernation.

For me, the boot sequence spends a lot of time in BIOS initialization and all that jazz - from the Windows splash screen first shows to the desktop appears takes less time than the BIOS init sequence. Time until desktop appears and machine is usable is relatively fast, and most of the time is spent loading apps I'm depending on (FARR, LaunchBarCommander, etc.

And once you're at your desktop and ready, which is all a startup-management app can really help with, there's the issue of starting whatever programs you use for the task(s) you're going to work on... keeping your machine on (or resume from standby, or wake it from hibernation) is going to be a lot more efficient than micro-managing services.

But perhaps I'm missing something? I'm not going to install a piece of software with such a buzz-wordy tech-info-free site, especially not when there's this text (emphasis mine):

Our patent-pending low level driver technology detects when you’re frustrated by your PC and tells you which application is causing it.

-http://www.soluto.com/About/

Driver technology? If they're using a kernel driver to look at boot time, I'm a bit worried. If they're not using a driver, they're IMHO guilty of bad advertising.

EDIT:
OK, just watched their beta demo video - looks like it's not even managing services, just startup apps? (At least there will be no misguided recommendations to disable SuperFetch, then ). There's a few things to say from that video, most of them positive:

• The user interface is great. Probably results in the app being bloated, but it has a really great & intuitive look.
• The boot-duration timeline could turn out to be useful.
• The built-in wiki integration looks nice, but I do wonder if it's going to turn out well. A lot of users are, sorry to say it, morons
• I'm interested in the after-bootup "My PC Just Frustrated Me" thing - what data is being sent? How can just sending whatever data be of any help without a description of what was frustrating? This looks a bit like snake-oil.

[jamiemac2005]

Hey, i can't help but call this the bootup app i've always been looking for. More than anything because i had way too many services starting up that i couldn't find out whether i could disable or not. Essentially i managed to cut my boot time from a frustrating 3:32 to 1:49. The only thing that aggrivates me is that it doesn't like being disabled itself. Still it's a good program. I like the splash screen aswell, it's inspired a new idea for a splash of my own.

[jamiemac2005]

Okay the one annoying thing about this piece of software is that it starts up on windows boot. Whilst i love the program it seems like installing an un-necessary start-up app to speed up the boot process is a little counterproductive. My way of disabling this was to use Autoruns to kill all the start-up instances of soluto. Of course you could also just take note of what you'd disabled in Soluto and then disable them the old-fashioned way.

[40hz]

Downloaded and gave it a try yesterday on one of my macines and a client machine (with their permission ) to see what it could do.

I follow a pretty draconian approach to booting services and apps so I had my box tuned up already. Reported boot time was 1:31. It had three "possibles" which I ignored because they were doing what I wanted them to. But I already knew that.

On the client machine boot time was 3:38. I agreed with all the recommended tweaks and about 75% of the possible tweaks right off the top. This app does seem to think much like I do about this stuff. Just implementing the recommended changes shaved a little over a full minute off the boot.  Pretty slick. 

Like fodder, I'm curious about the crowdsourced aspects of its data gathering model. And +1 with his observation that a lot of people who are quick to share their knowledge about technical  issues are frequently guilty of providing erroneous information. Guess time will tell how well it works out.

Also curious about the "frustration" button. I didn't have anything to test that out on so it will have to wait until either something crops up, or I deliberately cause a problem just to see what it does. Did anybody get a chance to check it out?

Anyway, it seems benign (and potentially useful) so I'm gonna leave it on my box for a while just to see if it misbehaves.

Kudos on the eye candy too. It does have a very pretty interface. One of the nicer looking apps I've seen.

[40hz]

Looks great in theory until you realise you shouldn't even have to worry about it, because the OS should already do it for you.

-justice (November 02, 2010, 08:44 AM)

Good point. But I think they're gearing up to selling it to PC manufacturers as a utility that will be included with new machines. It could cut down on support call times since it seems to be able to diagnose and correct all the common "dumb" boot problems the average user might experience. And it also does so in a very safe manner so it's easy to recover if it actually does screw something up. Which is a lot more than can be said for most of those registry "cleaner" apps out there.

I wouldn't call it a Tech's tool. But for what it is, it's pretty nice.  

[MrCrispy]

I stopped worrying about boot times a long time ago. Don't care if its 10s or 5min since I only boot my pc for restarts due to updates, the rest of the time I use sleep, which is near instant with Windows 7.

[SchoolDaGeek]

I found Process Lasso by Bitsum Tech which works very well for me and not only speeds up the boot but also keeps your system snappier, can be adjusted in real time by a few clicks...I was able to put XPSP3 on a 400Mhz Celeron 512mb with it.

[Darwin]

I'm running Process Lasso myself - does it really speed up boot time? I can't say I've noticed (though I'm with MrCrispy - I don't really care anymore) any difference and I can't find any settings for it within the program.

[Curt]

I and several others have had problems with Soluto not working at all. Maybe I've found an explanation to this. It *seems* (to me) that Soluto has to be in contact with the company's server during PC start. They wrote the following, in August:

Our current version has several known bugs. Most issues boil down to one single problem, namely, Soluto simply not being able to run on the user’s PC. Some of the issues have to do with the amount of users running Soluto, and as more users join-in – existing users may suffer.

The best interest of our users must always out-weigh the quantity of downloads. So:

We’ve been working on a version that resolves most of our scaling issues. It’s taking us longer than we’d like because we’re constantly context-switching between: 1) fixing actual specific scale problems on our servers and; 2) writing the new version.

-August

[rgdot]

Long time ago, just by removing unneeded services and apps (using only msconfig) I cut system startup time a lot.
I would say application startup time is more important, anything from Firefox to higher end stuff like CAD software, etc. can really be slow on some systems

[jamiemac2005]

Hey all. I'd agree that removing all un-necessary services and applications from running on boot makes a significant difference. Not only on the boot time but the cpu usage when your computer's running.

The only benefit i see in soluto is that it tells you what the applications do.

It doesn't cover everything. If you wanted something to do that i'd suggest Autoruns (SysInternals). And then using google to work out what they do.

I like soluto but only after having disabled it starting up and annoying me itself.
Personally on a daily basis i will use; Firefox, some heavy IDE (Netbeans), and various graphic design programs. Before disabling startup apps i'd notice that from boot it would take FF about 20 seconds to load. After it takes an un-noticeable amount of time. When running the graphics programs i'd notice a lag.
If you're a heavy user it's definately worth cutting down on programs running that don't need to be. Services especially, i had a svchost that was running about 80% cpu between boot and actual computer use.

[40hz]

It doesn't cover everything. If you wanted something to do that i'd suggest Autoruns (SysInternals). And then using google to work out what they do.

-jamiemac2005 (November 15, 2010, 10:59 AM)

You need to keep in mind the intended audience for something like this.

If you're knowledgeable enough to use SysInternals Autoruns  effectively, you're not the sort of user who needs (or will be likely to want to use) something like Soluto.  

[f0dder]

Not only on the boot time but the cpu usage when your computer's running.

-jamiemac2005 (November 15, 2010, 10:59 AM)

Shouldn't make that much difference on CPU usage, as most services are going to be idle most of the time - but it can definitely make a difference wrt. memory consumption.

Services especially, i had a svchost that was running about 80% cpu between boot and actual computer use.

-jamiemac2005 (November 15, 2010, 10:59 AM)

Indexing service?

[40hz]

Services especially, i had a svchost that was running about 80% cpu between boot and actual computer use.

-jamiemac2005 (November 15, 2010, 10:59 AM)

Indexing service?

-f0dder (November 15, 2010, 11:23 AM)

Or some Java-based app checking and doing updates after creating a restore point?

[jamiemac2005]

Hey, haha. It was a mixture of the indexing service and a few other updating programs.

On the contrary i think that if you have the knowledge to use Autoruns it becomes a brilliant tool for the deeper stuff but for services/startup applications soluto gives you the information you need quickly.

[cranioscopical]

Can somebody help me with this, please?

I installed Soluto to take a look at it.
I don't want it and so uninstalled it and now have remaining the following items.
Can I delete this stuff without unpleasant consequences?

Name              : Soluto
In Folder         : C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32
Type              : File Folder
==================================================
Name              : Soluto.ni
In Folder         : C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\Soluto\a75f45b8932b3e6143a2efbb8bcd105f
Size              : 2,046 KB
Type              : Application
==================================================
Name              : SolutoConsole
In Folder         : C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32
Type              : File Folder
==================================================
Name              : SolutoConsole.ni
In Folder         : C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\SolutoConsole\376c88ed8d19f92d21df92262eb6433c
Size              : 3,333 KB
Type              : Application
==================================================
Name              : SolutoService
In Folder         : C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32
Type              : File Folder
==================================================
Name              : SolutoService.ni
In Folder         : C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\SolutoService\dd786531560c1b84a29d1785654556bf
Size              : 795 KB
Type              : Application
==================================================
Name              : SolutoUpdateService
In Folder         : C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32
Type              : File Folder
==================================================
Name              : SolutoUpdateService.ni.dll
In Folder         : C:\WINDOWS\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\SolutoUpdateService\e2a07f99f03b3b7dd2013d6cf312fad0
Size              : 106 KB