Trace Windows 7 boot/shutdown/hibernate/standby/resume issues

[doveman]

Hi MagicAndre, thanks for this guide.

I'm having a problem where W7 is taking ages to boot to the GUI. I recently installed the ATI SB drivers and then my PC wouldn't boot anymore (BSOD) so I had to boot to Last Known Configuration which worked and has now become the default, with ControlSet001 marked as failed.

I obviously haven't tried installing the ATI SB Drivers again as I don't want to mess it up again, so it's using the MS AHCI SATA driver at the moment. I've set the boot options, NoGUI and OS Boot Information and the last thing I see loading is atipcie.sys and then it doesn't seem to do anything for ages before the Welcome screen appears.

Looking at the trace, PreSMSS takes 5.9s, SMSSInit 11s, WinlogonInit 5.7s, ExplorerInit 8.3s, PostExplorerPeriod 40s, TraceTail 84s. As the delay I'm concerned about is in the pre-GUI stages, I'm guessing the problems in the SMSSInit stage but it sure feels like longer than 11s. I'll go and time it to check.

I also checked the start parameters of the AHCI/ATI drivers in the two ControlSets and this is what I found:

ControlSet001 (Failed/BSOD):

amdsata - 0

amdide - 3

atipcie - 0

msahci - 0

ControlSet002 (Current/Working Set):

amdsata - 3

amdide - 3

atipcie - 0

msahci - 0

Can I upload the trace for you to look at? Will the summary_boot.xml be sufficient or do you need the 377MB .etl?

EDIT: As I suspected, the delay is much longer than the trace suggests. From the boot.ini countdown finishing to the last driver in the list (atipcie.sys) being shown was 5s, then the GUI didn't appear for another 1min22s and it was about another 35s until everything finished loading.

Edited August 16, 2012 by doveman

[MagicAndre1981]

compress the large ETL as 7z, this dramatically reduces the size.

[doveman]

Indeed it does. It's only 38MB now! http://www.mediafire.com/?dor41dw2kan981k

[MagicAndre1981]

the only delay you may see is the run of the program which his added in the key BootExecuteList and the Initialization of the registry:

There is also a small delay (2.5s) where Windows tries to enum all IDE divices:

<phase name="bootStart" startTime="30" endTime="3249" duration="3218">
  <pnpObject name="PCIIDE\IDEChannel\4+21254128+0+0" type="Device" activity="Enum" startTime="267" endTime="2779" duration="2511" prePendTime="0" description="IDE Channel" friendlyName="ATA Channel 0" /> 

Also starting AntiVir service takes 11s:

The largest delay is the run of all startup programs which takes 30.5s ( postBootDisturbance="30500")

Uninstall tools like the AMD Control Center and other stuff you don't need.

[doveman]

Thanks for analysing it for me but that doesn't seem to explain the 1min22s delay between atipcie.sys loading and the GUI / Welcome screen appearing, which is what I'm bothered about.

[MagicAndre1981]

I can't see such an delay. Your Windows boots in 31s to the desktop and is fully booted in 61s:

timing bootDoneViaExplorer="31063" bootDoneViaPostBoot="71563"

[doveman]

I can't see such an delay. Your Windows boots in 31s to the desktop and is fully booted in 61s:

timing bootDoneViaExplorer="31063" bootDoneViaPostBoot="71563"

I wish it did Wierd the delay's not captured in the trace. I'll try and make another one as I didn't actually time it when making that one but rebooted and timed it then. The delay happens every time I boot though.

[doveman]

Well I've double-checked and whether I'm doing the trace or booting normally, there's a 1min26s delay between atipcie.sys loading and the Welcome screen appearing, so the bootDoneViaExplorer="32867" is nonsense

[MagicAndre1981]

can you make some more traces? Add -numRuns X to the commandline (replace X with a number) to make several traces. Do you see the delay and xbootmgr doesn't capture them?

[doveman]

Do you see the delay and xbootmgr doesn't capture them?

If you're asking whether xbootmgr's trace is showing the 1min26s delay that happens on every boot, no it doesn't.

can you make some more traces? Add -numRuns X to the commandline (replace X with a number) to make several traces.

I could do but I'm not sure I see any point. The delay happens every boot and neither of the two traces I've done so far reflect it, so for whatever reason xbootmgr doesn't appear to notice it and I don't see why making it repeat x times would change that.

[MagicAndre1981]

I think it doesn't show because the delay only occurs when you activate the boot logging with F8. Now Windows runs in old 640*480 pixel mode which is slow to switch to the full resolution. This was also the cause for slow Vista boot issues. And I think this logging causes the issues.

[doveman]

I think it doesn't show because the delay only occurs when you activate the boot logging with F8. Now Windows runs in old 640*480 pixel mode which is slow to switch to the full resolution. This was also the cause for slow Vista boot issues. And I think this logging causes the issues.

Ah OK, maybe that's it. I can't recall if I had the delay before and that's why I activated the logging (with the bootlog option in msconfig, rather than F8) but I'll try deactivating that and see if it speeds it up.

[doveman]

I think it doesn't show because the delay only occurs when you activate the boot logging with F8. Now Windows runs in old 640*480 pixel mode which is slow to switch to the full resolution. This was also the cause for slow Vista boot issues. And I think this logging causes the issues.

Well I disabled the Noguiboot and Show Boot Info options in msconfig and now it takes just as long but just doesn't show anything for about 1.5mins until the Windows loading animation appears, followed not too long after by the Welcome screen.

[MagicAndre1981]

make a new boot trace

[robe]

Hi MagicAndre!

Thanks for this tutorial!

I've got an ASUS X53SV that takes about 2 min to boot. I've been checking Event Handler and boot logs but I cant figure it out. Now I have tried to do a boot trace and I cant make out what take so long time booting.

I wonder if you could take a look at it?

The laptop got Intel Core i5 2410M, Geforce GT 540M graphics card, 6 GB RAM.

Best regards