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What Slows down My Re-Boot Times
Some of you might recall the oft-quoted post from 2006 entitled: What Really Slows Windows Down
I thought it time to perhaps re-examine this.
Defining "bootup time" is somewhat arbitrary. I chose to use the utility "Boot Timer" to measure this. My initial reservations about using this were alleviated when it replicated what I had found manually, but with somewhat more precision.
After disabling all msconfig/startups with WinPatrol, (including all my defenses) my Windows XP/sp3 re-boots up in about 45 seconds.
With all my resident defenses loading at re-boot (NOD32 v2.7, BOClean, Comodo Firewall Pro 3/HIPS, Windows Defender, ERUNT), re-boot time is about 66 sec. (+ 21 sec, or a delay of 47%)
Re-boot times (average of 3) with only the following single apps loading at startup:
NOD32:_____________46s (+1 sec, or a delay of ~2%)
Windows Defender:___ 47s (+2 sec, or a delay of ~4%)
ERUNT:____________ 49s (+4 sec, or a delay of ~9%)
Comodo FW:_________50s (+5 sec, or a delay of ~11%)
BOClean:____________65s (+20 sec, or a delay of ~44%)
Since I also have the paid versions of MBAM, WinPatrol Plus, and a-squared, but choose not to run them in real-time, I was interested as to how they might delay my re-boot times if run as resident at startup:
MBAM:_____________49s (+4 sec, or a delay of ~9%)
a-squared:___________47s (+2 sec, or a delay of ~4%)
WinPatrol Plus:_______46s (+1 sec, or a dealy of ~2%)
I'm not sure what to make of all of this. These are crude measurements. I'm not sure that programs that slow down my re-boot times necessarily translate into programs that slow down my PC, although this is a reasonable assumption. It does seem that my resident defenses (with the exception of BOClean) are not appreciably slowing down my re-boots. And perhaps, those of you using NOD32, Windows Defender, ERUNT, MBAM, A-2 anti-malware, or WinPatrol can take some measure of relief that they are not slowing down your system too.
marcoshid
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January 7th, 2009 21:00
Very interesting thanks for the info
ky331
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January 8th, 2009 05:00
Joe,
as always, another fascinating, thought-provoking, analysis!
when we speak about security programs, we typically have focused on anti-Virus, anti-malware, and firewall. there's one program you mentioned above that does not appear to fit nicely into any of these categories: ERUNT (Emergency Recovery Utility NT) -- which "creates a complete [registry] backup set, including the Security hive and user related sections. (Note: The standard registry backup options that come with Windows back up most of the registry but not all of it)."
1) Could you take a moment to elaborate on your thoughts, comments, and personal experience with ERUNT. In particular, has it ever "resurrected" your system? Can it repair/restore a registry on an UNbootable system? Or does it only repair a bootable, but somewhat "corrupt", system? [(*) See EDIT below]
2) Since you have included it in your auto-start programs: do you feel it necessary to have ERUNT run every time you start up your PC? Or would it suffice to (manually) run it, say, once a week (or even once a month) [perhaps using scheduled task manager, lest you forget to do so]?
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Since BOClean is clearly "outside the ballpark" --- in terms of the excessive time it takes to load, relative to your other programs --- are you considering substituting one of your other protection programs, perhaps a-squared anti malware, for it? Or do you feel it best to stick with BOClean?
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"I'm not sure that programs that slow down my re-boot times necessarily translate into programs that slow down my PC, although this is a reasonable assumption".
I never like to disagree with you, but I have a different perspective here. Programs that load at boot-up need to access your hard drive, reading/loading their programs/data. Most of these fall into the category of TSR: Terminate, but Stay Resident. Unless they need to do further disk access, they should function faster once RAM-resident. [Disk I/O tends to be the slowest PC function] In the article ("What Really Slows Windows Down") you cited, i think it apparrent that there is no correlation between boot delay and file i/o delay.
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(*) EDIT: I've downloaded ERUNT, and read through (some of) its documentation, and see that it can, in conjunction with a Windows O/S CD and the Windows Recovery Console, attempt to repair a completely UNbootable system!
joe53
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January 8th, 2009 14:00
ky331: To answer some of your questions about ERUNT:
Yes, I make a new copy of the registry with every re-boot, which is stored in my C:\WINDOWS\ERDNT by default, and titled by date. If I reboot twice on any given day, the backup for that day is over-written. Needless to say, with each registry backup taking up about 60 MB, this folder increases in size substantially with time. There is a way, outlined in the ERUNT documentation, to automatically delete backups older than x number of days.
This gives me the ability to always access/revert to a recent registry via safe mode or recovery console, much like the 5 most recent registries backed up by Win9x/ME (but curiously, not XP). Running ERUNT with every re-boot does not appreciably slow down the boot time, and I can't think of any good reason not to include it in startup. I have no faith in System Restore, which is of little use if one's registry gets corrupted.
I have not actually had a disaster requiring use of ERUNT (via the recovery console); but I do find it has other uses. For example, whenever I install a new program on a trial basis ( and you know how I like to test apps), I always run ERUNT first. If I decide subsequently to uninstall the program (and many leave a lot of stray entries behind in the registry) restoring the backup makes for a much cleaner uninstall. I've certainly cured a few glitches introduced by dodgy apps using ERUNT in this manner.
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I'm keeping BOClean for now. A 20 second delay of boot-up is not a major nuisance, and BOC has otherwise proved problem-free for me. On the other hand, it never alerts me to anything, and I have no idea if it is still of any use. I guess I'm relying on Tony Klein's favorable opinion of BOC expressed at aumha (some time ago, and no longer available there).
Boot-times aside, I have had problems with previous versions of both a2-AntiMalware and MBAM slowing down my system somewhat in real-time. Perhaps it's time to try them again. Then again, I really only want one resident anti-spyware running, and I like Windows Defender. I'm hard-pressed to find objective evidence that A2 or MBAM provide superior resident protection.
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I had initially hoped to use MS utility BootVis (used in the 2006 article I linked to) to also examine system delays, including the Disk I/O. MS hasn't provided/supported BootVis for several years, and the copy I downloaded I could not get to work. Thus I was limited to looking only at boot-times. As you say, this might well not correlate with system slowdowns.