During a warm or a cold boot, what is happening in the background while the
screen shows the little boxes travelling across the little box in the middle
of the screen?

Over the years I've noticed that, at least in my case, the length of time
spent during a boot for the little animated bullets to move across the box
on the screen is related to the health of the system. Normally it seems 7
to 9 passes of the little animated bullet are "normal".
Unless I have GoBack or something similar installed, which adds I think
19 "passes" for the bullet (and is repeatable), I can know pretty much that
if I see it taking 20 or more passes before going to the next screen more
than two or three times in a row, I'm going to experience system problems of
one sort of another; sometimes right away, sometimes not right away.

Is there any info anywhere that explains what's going on during the various
screens that are presented during boot, from the end of the POST up to say,
the point where the icons are painted on the screen?
I would appreciate any info and/or leads to info on the subject.

No, I'm not having any problems presently: I'd just like to figure this out
for future use.

TIA

Pop`

--
There's no place like 127.0.0.1

Try
MSCONFIG, boot.ini tab, /SOS switch.

Poprivet wrote:

> During a warm or a cold boot, what is happening in the background while the
> screen shows the little boxes travelling across the little box in the middle
> of the screen?
>
> Over the years I've noticed that, at least in my case, the length of time
> spent during a boot for the little animated bullets to move across the box
> on the screen is related to the health of the system. Normally it seems 7
> to 9 passes of the little animated bullet are "normal".
> Unless I have GoBack or something similar installed, which adds I think
> 19 "passes" for the bullet (and is repeatable), I can know pretty much that
> if I see it taking 20 or more passes before going to the next screen more
> than two or three times in a row, I'm going to experience system problems of
> one sort of another; sometimes right away, sometimes not right away.
>
> Is there any info anywhere that explains what's going on during the various
> screens that are presented during boot, from the end of the POST up to say,
> the point where the icons are painted on the screen?
> I would appreciate any info and/or leads to info on the subject.
>
> No, I'm not having any problems presently: I'd just like to figure this out
> for future use.
>
> TIA
>
> Pop`
>

"Poprivet" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>During a warm or a cold boot, what is happening in the background while the
>screen shows the little boxes travelling across the little box in the middle
>of the screen?

All kinds of things. Windows is loading itself into RAM, looking at
the registry to decide what drivers and other things that need to be
read in, what processes need to be started.

>Over the years I've noticed that, at least in my case, the length of time
>spent during a boot for the little animated bullets to move across the box
>on the screen is related to the health of the system. Normally it seems 7
>to 9 passes of the little animated bullet are "normal".
> Unless I have GoBack or something similar installed, which adds I think
>19 "passes" for the bullet (and is repeatable), I can know pretty much that
>if I see it taking 20 or more passes before going to the next screen more
>than two or three times in a row, I'm going to experience system problems of
>one sort of another; sometimes right away, sometimes not right away.

I don't know what GoBack is, but it sounds like it's waiting for
something that's taking a long time - or maybe even not happening at
all, and it's waiting until some amount of time passes before it gives
up.

As BobI said, you can see a lot of what's going on here by going to
msconfig (Start|Run,type "msconfig"), going to the "boot.ini" tab and
clicking the "/SOS" box. Here are descriptions of the "Boot Options"
on that tab:

/SAFEBOOT - This option tells Windows XP to boot into safe mode.
Safeboot has its own options as well.

MINIMAL - This is the default option. It tells the system to boot
into normal Safe Mode.
NETWORK - This option tells the system to boot into Safe Mode
with Networking Support mode.
SREPAIR - This option is for repairing Active Directory
controllers.
MINIMAL (ALTERNATESHELL) - This option tells Windows XP to boot
into Safe Mode Command Prompt mode.

/NOGUIBOOT - This option tells Windows XP to not use the splash screen
at startup. It is mainly useful in conjunction with other boot
options. By itself it means the screen will just be blank until you
get to the login screen.

/BOOTLOG - This option tells Windows XP to log everything it does
during the boot process to the c:\windows\ntbtlog.txt file. This can
be useful for diagnosing startup problems by seeing exactly where the
boot process is hanging.

/BASEVIDEO - This option forces Windows XP to use the VGA driver for
video instead of whatever enhanced driver is installed on the system.
This switch is useful in troubleshooting video driver problems, as the
VGA driver is extremely simple and well-tested.

/SOS - This option tells Windows XP to display the drivers it is
loading as it loads them. It also forces Windows XP to check the file
system during boot for problems.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)
(E-Mail Removed)
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt