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Any tool that immediately shows boot time problems?

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IainB:
@highend01:
To answer your Q: There was a tool - I forget it's name - that I recall I wrote about on the DC Forum some time (years) ago, when I was running WinXP. It was free, and it did a very thorough job of telling you what all the started proggies and services did during startup, and suggested how you could move startup sequences about to minimise the startup duration. I thought it was potentially very useful.

I stopped using it as I no longer needed it and it was itself a heavy overhead if you kept it in the startup queue.

Suggestions:
@Shades makes a good point re the possibility that the hard disk could be failing. The symptoms you describe are what one could expect from a failing disk drive. So, as a first step, consider installing Hard Disk Sentinel and see what it says.

Without wishing to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, there could be several things causing the prolonged bootup time.
I have got used to being asked to make examinations of friend's PCs that are S-L-O-W. I usually do the following, in the "better safe than sorry" priority order given:


* Install and run a licenced copy of Malwarebytes. Set it to do a full scan. Remove the licence and uninstall it when done, unless the user is happy to pay for a licence, in which case buy a new licence and assign that to the installed proggy.
* Remove and expunge with prejudice any and all virus checkers except MS Security Essentials. If the latter is not installed, install and run it - do a full scan.
* Install and run Hard Disk Sentinel. Do this first if the hard disk is suspect.
* Install and run CCleaner. Clean up the disk for all relevant apps., then the Registry.
* Run Windows cleanmgr.exe - setting it to clean almost everything except error/performance logs, and delete old Restore Points.
* Install and Run Sysinternals' Autoruns. Scrutinise all startup processes and adjust as necessary. Delete all "File not found" lines.
* Install and run Process Hacker (in preference to Sysinternals' Process Explorer). Scrutinise all processes and services.
* Create a new temp folder C:\TEMP and assign Environment Variables .TMP and .TEMP to that folder.
* Install and run Everything (Search proggie). Scan the disk(s) for residual .TEMP, .TMP and .bak files and Temp folders and Cache folders, and delete any junk that can be safely deleted.
* Check and reset (if necessary to rebuild the search index) Windows Desktop Search settings. Unset any superfluous time-consuming settings.
* Run Windows defrag.
Somewhere amongst that lot you are likely to identify most problems and find out how to rectify the situation.

MilesAhead:
This page gives a simplified approach to boot log analysis:
http://sourcedaddy.com/windows-7/how-to-analyze-boot-logs.html

If the system successfully boots, but is slow to do so, I would just count the lines that start with
"did not load driver"  when booting in normal mode as those will time out.  Control f in notepad.  :)

Shades:
IainB was talking about the tool: Soluto (MajorGeeks)

This tool shows you exactly how long each part and/or program in the boot procedure took...and where you can make the most gains. Pay attention to programs in the boot process which require access to internet to function. If there is VPN software installed, virtualization software installed or both, the Windows system registers multiple network cards with which it can work. Thing is that these network cards are accessed in order of priority, not all at once.

It could be useful to change the order of priority, because most network traffic uses the TCP protocol for the actual communication. This is an old protocol, which can wait for a maximum of 30 seconds before it assumes a network connection is bad. During that waiting period, the rest of Windows is waiting too. This TCP waiting period cannot be adjusted using the GUI in Windows, Microsoft has never made it part of any configuration setting anywhere in any version of Windows.

Only in the registry it can be adjusted, but is not advised to do so, unless you really know what you are doing. In any case, if the order of priority is set in such a way that only the last network card is able to create a working connection during boot, the TCP protocol can introduce long wait times in the boot procedure. If there are more than one piece of software that requires internet access during boot, TCP will introduce the same waiting period each time.

A tool like Soluto will give you a much better idea of where to look for solving long boot times.

Edit:
An alternative to soluto: BootRacer (free for non-commercial purposes)

When you cleared up the boot mess, it is likely helpful to put up software that lets the owner of the system know when new installed software makes its way into the boot procedure again.
Tools like WinPatrol, Sterjo Startup Patrol or SpyBot Search 'n Destroy can help with that.

Edit 2:
Adjuste the Soluto link.

wraith808:
IainB was talking about the tool: Soluto
-Shades (March 09, 2017, 07:58 AM)
--- End quote ---

Unless I'm missing something at your link, that's a service, not a tool, owned by Asurion, the same people that do the after-market warranties.

Shades:
Apologies, I think I linked to the wrong website  :-[

Here is a link (MajorGeeks) where you can download the Soluto installer.

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