Windows 7: How to determine your Boot & Shutdown times

The Event Viewer contains, although often well-hidden, some useful info.

Here's how to determine your Boot & Shutdown times:

WIN key | type EVENTVWR.MSC | ENTER key

First wait for the Event Viewer to be populated-watch the Summary of Administrative Events section.

Now, using the left-hand pane tunnel down as follows:
Applications and services logs | Microsoft | Windows | Diagnostics-Performance | Operational

Right-click on Operational.

In the top-section of the middle pane, various events are listed.

Click on EventID to sort the events from smallest to largest.

EventID 100 is for Boot Performance.
EventID 200 is for Shutdown Performance



You may find some of the other events to also be of interest.

I read somewhere there was a way to do that, but could not find it. I will remember this. Rep to you.

Unless I did it wrong, it appears you must run as administrator (what I did) or at least be in an adm account.

Same here !!

Thanks guys. Glad to be of assistance. I ran across this in a Windows OS blog by Sean Wheeler. I had "starred" same and had waited until I'd used the procedure a couple of times to make sure all was good. The "starred" refers to the capability of the Google Reader to mark a blog with a star and then view later by looking at the starred items.

The Boot time must include the time it takes for the BIOS splash screen. My boot times listed by the Eventvwr are +/- 36sec whilst I measured (with the stopwatch) 12 to 15sec from when the "Loading windows" appears on the screen to when my internet is operational (my weatherbug shows data).

Mine shows 58 seconds, including the time for Bios Splash..

My last three show, with rounding: 32.5, 38.5 and 31.5 seconds.

So it does include the BIOS time.

Click on the Details tab for Event 100.

Here's an example:
+ System

- Provider

[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance
[ Guid] {CFC18EC0-96B1-4EBA-961B-622CAEE05B0A}

EventID 100

Version 2

Level 3

Task 4002

Opcode 34

Keywords 0x8000000000010000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2010-08-15T22:19:51.928178900Z

EventRecordID 304

- Correlation

[ ActivityID] {00000000-CB28-0000-8BB7-778EC73CCB01}

- Execution

[ ProcessID] 1524
[ ThreadID] 1596

Channel Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational

Computer karl-PC

- Security

[ UserID] S-1-5-19


- EventData

BootTsVersion 2
BootStartTime 2010-08-15T22:16:49.656000700Z
BootEndTime 2010-08-15T22:19:48.995366400Z
SystemBootInstance 121
UserBootInstance 112
BootTime 31458
MainPathBootTime 15858
BootKernelInitTime 30
BootDriverInitTime 1231
BootDevicesInitTime 4049
BootPrefetchInitTime 4234
BootPrefetchBytes 299302912
BootAutoChkTime 0
BootSmssInitTime 5157
BootCriticalServicesInitTime 1049
BootUserProfileProcessingTime 689
BootMachineProfileProcessingTime 82
BootExplorerInitTime 2688
BootNumStartupApps 6
BootPostBootTime 15600
BootIsRebootAfterInstall false
BootRootCauseStepImprovementBits 0
BootRootCauseGradualImprovementBits 0
BootRootCauseStepDegradationBits 0
BootRootCauseGradualDegradationBits 0
BootIsDegradation false
BootIsStepDegradation false
BootIsGradualDegradation false
BootImprovementDelta 0
BootDegradationDelta 0
BootIsRootCauseIdentified false
OSLoaderDuration 1419
BootPNPInitStartTimeMS 30
BootPNPInitDuration 4086
OtherKernelInitDuration 1145
SystemPNPInitStartTimeMS 5220
SystemPNPInitDuration 1194
SessionInitStartTimeMS 6426
Session0InitDuration 3213
Session1InitDuration 1181
SessionInitOtherDuration 762
WinLogonStartTimeMS 11584
OtherLogonInitActivityDuration 815
UserLogonWaitDuration 76072

Thanks Karl. That is really seeing it in small slices.