I got a custom-built AMD Phenom II X3 710 system (2.6GHz, 8GB DDR2 RAM, no overclocking), Win 7 Ultimate x64. It's got a truly annoying boot up time. I measured with a stopwatch, and it took 2:08 minutes to boot from start to the user logon. But it doesn't stop there, even after getting into the user account, there is still further boot up going on, and the hard disk LED basically remains on full for 5 minutes (since boot) before we see it first flickering down. The system is somewhat heavily loaded with hardware, it's got 4 hard drives internally, and a couple of more externals attached via USB. The boot drive is a 1TB Hitachi SATA. The same machine dual-boots into Ubuntu Linux in about 1:30 minutes flat from the same physical hard disk (different partition). I've been lately trying to optimize the services, by changing some of the automatic startup items to the new "automatic (delayed start)" method, but it hasn't made much difference. In the event logs there are various warnings and errors that show up constantly during the boot process, which I think are relevant here: One warning is from Wininit, event 11, "Custom dynamic link libraries are being loaded for every application". One error is from Volsnap, event 25, "The shadow copies of volume C: were deleted because the shadow copy storage could not grow in time. Consider reducing the IO load on the system or choose a shadow copy storage volume that is not being shadow copied." Can anyone explain these above two messages, and what I can do about them?

The most likely cause is the external USB drives. Windows 7 has to identify them as "new" items each time it boots. If you want external hard drives, the best method is to use eSATA.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Well, I got one eSATA drive too, it is my backed up Windows XP boot drive, I use it mainly as a boot to Windows XP if I need it (don't really need it anymore). I usually keep it turned off. Another problem with eSATA is that it ends up rearranging my hard drive boot order. I have to go into BIOS to rearrange them. I've also started up without USB drives turned on, and it wasn't any faster.

Download Soluto ( http://www.soluto.com/ ) to see what is causing Boot time to be so long. Jerry

Download Soluto ( http://www.soluto.com/ ) to see what is causing Boot time to be so long. this is a bad tool! Make sure you have the service Superfetch running and next try to speed up the boot with the help of my guide [1]. This trains the advanced prefetcher in Windows 7. This increase the boot performance a lot. All other tweaking tools are useless. Only use this method with this Microsoft Toolkit. If this doesn't speed up the boot process, follow my guide [2] to make a boot trace and compress the boot_BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER_1.etl as 7z or RAR and upload it to your Skydrive [3] and post the link here. I take a look at the trace, maybe I see what's wrong with your Windows. André [1] http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=140262 [2] http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=140247 [3] http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/4fc10639-02db-4665-993a-08d865088d65 "A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

Make sure you have the service Superfetch running and next try to speed up the boot with the help of my guide [1]. This trains the advanced prefetcher in Windows 7. This increase the boot performance a lot. All other tweaking tools are useless. Only use this method with this Microsoft Toolkit. If this doesn't speed up the boot process, follow my guide [2] to make a boot trace and compress the boot_BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER_1.etl as 7z or RAR and upload it to your Skydrive [3] and post the link here. I take a look at the trace, maybe I see what's wrong with your Windows. André [1] http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=140262 [2] http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=140247 [3] http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/4fc10639-02db-4665-993a-08d865088d65 "A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/ Well, okay, I've gone through your procedures, it's certainly helped a bit, my startup-login time has gone down to 1:49 minutes (down from 2:08 minutes). And the startup-disk flicker time has gone down to 4:43 minutes (from 5:00 minutes). But unfortunately, I still can't say that this is fast. My feeling is that the disk seems to be doing a lot of seeking during this time, without doing a lot of transferring. It seems that the heads are so busy going back and forth, that it prevents actual work from getting done. Shouldn't the system disk cache be preventing this from happening? I got 8GB of RAM, so there should be plenty of room for disk metadata to get cached.

Well, okay, I've gone through your procedures, it's certainly helped a bit, my startup-login time has gone down to 1:49 minutes (down from 2:08 minutes). And the startup-disk flicker time has gone down to 4:43 minutes (from 5:00 minutes). But unfortunately, I still can't say that this is fast. My feeling is that the disk seems to be doing a lot of seeking during this time, without doing a lot of transferring. It seems that the heads are so busy going back and forth, that it prevents actual work from getting done. Shouldn't the system disk cache be preventing this from happening? I got 8GB of RAM, so there should be plenty of room for disk metadata to get cached. Whoa! I've been able to get back another massive chunk of time by solving the Wininit, event 11, "Custom dynamic link libraries are being loaded for every application" warning message mentioned at the beginning. My startup->login time has gone down to 1:11 minutes (down from previously optimized 1:49, and unoptimized 2:08); meanwhile, the startup->disk flicker time has gone down to 4:01 minutes (down from previously optimized 4:43, and unoptimized 5:00). Plus the system has gotten much more responsive during boot too! I found the solution to that warning on a thread from the Microsoft Answers forum here . According to the solution there, when I change the registry value of HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\LoadAppInit_DLLs from 1 to 0 , I immediately got back those massive chunks of time. I'm still not all that highly impressed with the actual Windows 7 boot times, but at least I'm able to click on stuff during the boot process and get some response out of the system: I was not getting any responsiveness before, and that annoyed me about the boot process. Since that event was listed as a warning, I was inclined to let it be, since it not as serious as an error. I'm glad I didn't wimp out and sought out a solution for it, otherwise I wouldn't have discovered this very simple solution. It looks like Windows 7 was loading a whole bunch of unnecessary DLLs for every program it was starting, and this stopped it from doing that. Thanks to Andre's boot optimization techniques, and this DLL load issue being solved, I got a much more responsive system that boots a lot faster too! And for the first time since I can remember there's no errors at all during boot-up on this system.

Hi, AppInit_DLLs are indeeded loaded into all processes. Look in the same key in the value AppInit_DLLs, which DLLs where loaded everytime. André"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

Hi, AppInit_DLLs are indeeded loaded into all processes. Look in the same key in the value AppInit_DLLs, which DLLs where loaded everytime. André "A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/ I did look at that, and it's completely blank! According to the original thread about the DLLs, the OP had loaded a specific antivirus program (AVG, which I am also using), and it may have left an artifact in the registry that it never removed, after uninstalling. In fact, this registry entry probably should've been set to zero immediately after AVG had finished being installed, let alone just after uninstallation. The installer forgot to set things back properly, it looks like.