Windows 7: Soluto

I guess that Soluto is a lost cause for me, because I did just reinstall it, and it is exactly the same as before. During the uninstall, the firewall popped the same dialog, saying that it had blocked Soluto from userinit, as it had after previous attempts to use it. Maybe it's just not compatible with my firewall, but if so, I don't think that I'm compatible with it. There is still no hide nor hair of Soluto since rebooting, and with the indications that I've gotten from the Event Viewer, I doubt that it would pinpoint a cause for the problem anyway. (Oops!, the firewall finally popped it's blocked dialog on Soluto again).



Since boot time has always been slow since I installed Windows 7, and never improved even when restoring from a True Image recovery, it doesn't seem as though there is any easy solution.

You can try adding an exception for the soluto exe file in the firewall. Alternatively, you can disable the file temporarily.

I disabled the firewall, and that hasn't helped with Soluto, but it did show an improvement in boot time. It dropped from an average of ~ 179 seconds, to ~ 140 seconds. Going back through recent boot times, there were some that were as much as 289 seconds. I may have to consider using a different firewall, but I'm reluctant to do so, since I have a lifetime license for this one. Even at 140 seconds, it is still pretty slow.

Finally, I got Soluto to work. Disabling the firewall after Soluto was running didn't help, but having it disabled before Soluto ran did. The first analysis said that the boot was 2:40, and after resetting a couple of apps, it pared it down to 2:24. I had it pause wmpnetwork, SpeedFan and ObjectDock. The biggest slowdown was SpeedFan...which I suspected even before using Soluto. Pausing these items did not make quite as good of an improvement as Soluto first claimed that it would, but even 16 seconds is an improvement. These times were with Outpost disabled, so I think that reenabling it will increase the time by ~ 36 seconds. I may have to consider replacing it afterall, but I'm not too thrilled about any of the other firewalls that I'm familiar with.

Regardless of what I do, it appears that my boot time will never be very good.

I got curious about the previous userinit issue, and rechecked the reg key to find that Soluto had added itself to it. I guess that is why that it didn't work previously.

This might be of use to you:

What

<http://itexpertvoice.com/home/what%E2%80%99s-taking-so-long-how-to-fight-slow-startup-times-in-windows-7/>

Regards....Mike Connor

Thanks, but that appears to be a rehash of the article that I linked previously. Your article goes into more detail, but from scanning over it, it doesn't appear to offer anything new. I have a tendency to think that my problem is not a particular program or driver, because as I said, the very first boot on this system took ~142 seconds. The odd thing is that after using Soluto to pause some programs that slowed the boot, my last boot time was even worse (3:18). One step forward, two back. I'm beginning to think that my hardware and Windows 7 simply don't like each other.

I have found that Hauppauge TV tuners add quite a bit of time during boot to load their drivers.
In my case, I have 2 HVT 2250's and they take almost 20 secs each. I disable the 2250's in device manager when I need to speed up the boot for application installs or troubleshooting. Also mapped network drives that are not available will add significant time 7-10 secs in my experience.

Indeed, a lot of variables here, and a lot of "trial and error". I am down to just over 90 seconds with fairly standard hardware, ( No SSD on this machine). Not that it bothers me much, as long as it runs reliably I don't really care how long the boot takes, as long as it is not excessive.

Regards....Mike Connor

Actually, the only reason that I started out on this course, is because I was bored and looking for something to do, but I should have known better, because every time that I go troubleshooting, trouble starts shooting back. I had to shutdown the computer while I took a hike for physiological reasons, and when I returned and powered up, the hard drive that XP resides on decided to die. In the process of taking care of that, a couple more hurdles were thrown my way. Sometimes trouble can be a real bear, and he's not just any common bear either.

Now I've got to hope that my XP backup image works, so that I can recover it to a different drive. I hate to use a 1TB drive in this fashion, but that is all that I have handy. XP doesn't have anything in it that matter too much, but all of my documents were on that drive also and they are not imaged. I would try using my recovery software, but with the XP drive plugged in, it was causing Windows 7 to have problems also, and it didn't appear in the Device Manager, so I doubt that my software would work on it.