Soluto

After reading several comments endorsing this program, I decided to give it a try. I'm not fond of the idea that it transmits data online elsewhere for analysis, but I didn't read that until I had installed it. Therefore, since I already have it, it seemed prudent to give it a try anyway.

The problem is that I can't seem to get it to work. From what I read, I think that it requires rebooting from the Soluto UI for it to begin functioning, but a left click on the System Tray icon does nothing. A right click on the icon produces a menu, with the option to open it, but all that does is to produce a splash screen saying that it is loading, but nothing more.

When I manually rebooted, Soluto didn't appear at all, until I select it from the Start Menu. Before I uninstall it and forget it, I wanted to see if anyone has an idea that would help, as the concept of boot analysis is something that I like.

While typing the last paragraph, the firewall popped a dialog saying that it had blocked Soluto from doing something, but that was so long after the last reboot, I doubt that it had to do with this problem. I had also set the firewall to permit the program to allow all activities, so apparently this was something that the firewall considered taboo regardless of settings. The popup only appeared for a couple moments, so I didn't fully comprehend it, but I think that it mentioned userinit as what Soluto was being blocked from.

Soluto needs to connect to its database (PC Genome) to pass on the boot events it captures in your machine, and based on that generate advice. Read this faq.

FAQ | Soluto

So you may need to explicitly permit soluto in the firewall. Other than that, just try uninstalling and reinstalling.

If you are interested in more detailed boot analysis, you can just check the boot performance degradation events in the event viewer. Heres a walkthrough.

Use Windows 7 Event Viewer to track down issues that cause slower boot times | TechRepublic

I shall look over your links, but I got curious about userinit, and found this article:

Userinit

The odd part is, that when I go to that location in the registry, there is no key called Winlogon. As I said, I set Soluto to have full reign as far as the firewall is concerned, so not only do I not understand the lack of the key, but also why the firewall would be protecting a key that doesn't exist.

seekermeister said:

I shall look over your links, but I got curious about userinit, and found this article:

Userinit

The odd part is, that when I go to that location in the registry, there is no key called Winlogon. As I said, I set Soluto to have full reign as far as the firewall is concerned, so not only do I not understand the lack of the key, but also why the firewall would be protecting a key that doesn't exist.

The winlogon key is very much there. Make sure you're looking in the right place.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Yes? Show me where:

You need to click on the little triangle at the left of "Current version" in the left pane, that'll expand that key. Then just scroll down to winlogon.

Okay, got it. The article that I mentioned above, speaks of substituting a program in place of userinit. Is that what would be required for Soluto to work?

I'm still working with the Event Viewer method of diagnosis, but it is not helping much. It seems that for each boot, that it lists a different process, rather than a pattern of one process continually reappearing. The boot time back on 8-29-2010 took ~ 142 seconds, and the last one took ~ 176 seconds. According to Bootracer, it took ~ 2:29. All of the boot times in the Event Viewer are marked as critical, so I'm at a loss as to how to approach this. Obviously, I have never been impressed with the boot time from day one.

No, just allow an exception in the firewall for soluto and uninstall and reinstall soluto.

Thing with the userinit bit is many users feel (rightly so) that they dont need soluto to run at every boot and just run it per choice. Personally I remember running soluto a long long time back, taking in what it said and then tweaking that part, after that I just uninstalled it.

The part about reinstalling Soluto I understand, but not the part about allowing an exception in the firewall. As I said, I did go to the Application Rules and set it to allow Soluto to do whatever it wanted, and that changed nothing. With the firewall that I have (Outpost), it seems to make new rules each time that a program is installed, so I doubt that any rules that I have currently set, would be operative on reinstallation.

Right, if soluto has free internet access, just uninstall and reinstall.