Troubleshooting slow boot times, Part Deux

In my last session, I covered a rudimentary usage of XPERF to analyze my slow booting Dell with a SSD in it.  The fix was simple and the problem stood out like a sore thumb.  Resolution was as simple as setting the Ambient Light Service from Dell into an Automatic (delays start) state.

But what about situations where things aren’t so simple?  What about slow booting machines in the enterprise?  Or even in the small business?  Where third party apps and malware and mis-configured anti-virus products take their toll on an otherwise stellar piece of hardware?

We have some free tools available to us to help troubleshoot slow logon times.

First, we have UserEnv logging.  This is alive and well in Windows 7 by the way, the KB just doesn’t reflect that fact.  I’d go over this in-depth, but why re-invent the wheel when it’s already buried in TechNet?  So go here and check it out, a wealth of information is at your fingertips to troubleshoot UserEnv logs.

Going hand in hand with this is GPLogView, a good tutorial can be found here on it.

Of course we have Xperf, though there is a learning curve associated with learning it.