Help diagnose startup time ....

[Golden]

Hi Everyone,

For some time now, I've been wondering why on my system my startup time is in the order of 107sec.

When I first installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 to my SSD (see system specs), I was achieving phenomenal startup times, but its slowly seems to have degraded.

Typically, when I turn my boot my PC, and I login, the "Welcome" message is displayed for a long time. As soon as it finishes Windows, and all my startup programs load virtually instantaneously. So, I'm trying to find out what is loading/enabling during the "Welcome" part of the bootup.

I've attached some images of my msconfig. Can anyone help me find out out why the "Welcome" message displays for so long, and what is causing my long boot-up? I'm expecting that with my OCZ Vertex 2 that from login to fully loaded desktop should be a matter of 10 or 20 secs. Does that seem reasonable?

Also, is there a way to copy and paste all my startup services from within the msconfig panels into a text file?

Thanks for any help you can give me,
Golden

 

[Golden]

EDIT : OK. I've just run Windows Performance Analyser to do a boot trace, problem is I don't really understand it. I've loaded up some images if that can help anyone help me.

Thanks,
Golden

EDIT : one more attachement - my boot phases : time on bottom axis is seconds. Green = start, red = finish.

 

[mickey megabyte]

i'm not surprised your boot is so slow, with all them startup entries - do you really need them all?

a lot of them can be safely disabled, without any loss of functionality. for example - do you need steam running all the time? or only when you're playing games...i always check msconfig after installing a new prog, and see if it's snuck any entries in - i only keep the ones i really need.

you're going to have to spend an hour or two disabling a few at a time, reboot, see if everything still works, disable a few more >> repeat. it's better to use services.msc to tweak services - it's best to set them to 'manual' rather than disable...then test!

as an example, i've only got two non-microsoft services and four progs in the startup tab - and yes a twenty second boot is certainly achievable with a vertex.

 

[gregrocker]

That is an unusually long Startup and Services list, one which I'd expect to cause a long Startup and hamper performance.

I'd uncheck all of the Startup items in msconfig except AV and gadgets/stikynotes if you use them.

Then with MS services hidden, turn off all the msconfig>Services that you didn't open yourself.

After reboot go back to see which ones turned themselves back on and find the way to turn them off in their program preferences.

This should greatly improve the Startup time. If not run another Boot Trace and ask it's expert Cluberti to analyze it.

Another cool new program that creates an animated self-explanatory boot map is Soluto, which will also let you delay startup items you don't want to turn off.

 

[Golden]

Thanks guys - I'll check it out and let you know hpow it goes.

 

[StalkeR]

I'll suggest you to change services that you don't use on Manual.(Not automatic)

 

[Jacee]

Java, Norton, MBam, Adobe.. any one of those could be looking for updates.

SuperAntiSpyware was causing an extremely slow startup on my XP machine, until I set it to manual startup.

 

[Golden]

Thanks Jacee and Stalker - I'll look at all of that too. I've also pm'ed Cluberti to see if he can look at my etl file as a start.

 

[cluberti]

After looking at the trace, it appears that it's the Symantec Framework service (ccsvchst.exe):


Winlogon appears to stop processing things (disk and cpu activity go way down when this loads) when ccsvchst.exe loads:

Also, I notice bowser.sys loaded three times, at different intervals, which would indicate network connectivity attempts off of the box - these also correspond to the "stop" in activity, and also the restart near the 31 second mark:

When going deeper into the pattern of CPU activity during the "stop" in winlogon processing, these two seemed to go together - wmiprvse.exe and ccsvchst.exe. This pattern is too much of a pattern to be a coincidence - winlogon should be hammering the disk and CPU throughout the process, not stopping for 25 - 30 seconds at a time. This was too suspicious to be anything other than the culprit:

After removal of the Symantec application, bootup time was approximately 70 seconds (rather than 380-ish), as verified by Golden.

 

[Golden]

Thanks a bunch Cluberti - you do know your stuff. 1 x juciy REP in the post Sir

EDIT : The quicker boot time was achieved by uninstalling NIS and replacing it with MSE.