indication that boot has completed?

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

While following the "14 minute boot problem" thread, I am reminded of my
problem with my blind friend's computer. Last time I was there, I
managed to get her desktop back to a usable state (by sufficient
tinkering that I can't say for sure which if any single action did it);
it had become flaky - not just a very long boot (though I don't think 14
minutes), but also liable to crash. (For a blind person this is of
course more problematical.)

Anyway! I often did want to know if something I'd done _had_ improved
the boot time (when I left [I only visit about twice a year] it was down
to about 3 to 5 minutes - long but usable, if the PC is just left on
[it's now quite responsive once it's finished booting]). But - with all
the things going on during boot (such as the speech and Braille
interfaces initialising) - it isn't easy to tell when the boot process
is complete.

So: is there any way of setting something - preferably audible - to be
the _last_ thing that happens at boot, so that when it happens, you know
that everything else has finished?

(It's an XP SP3 system, without logon user prompt.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"The wish of the lazy to allow unsupervised access [to the internet] to their
children should not reduce all adults browsing to the level of suitability for a
five-year-old." Yaman Akdeniz, quoted in Inter//face (The Times, 1999-2-10): p12

 

[Paul]

While following the "14 minute boot problem" thread, I am reminded of my
problem with my blind friend's computer. Last time I was there, I
managed to get her desktop back to a usable state (by sufficient
tinkering that I can't say for sure which if any single action did it);
it had become flaky - not just a very long boot (though I don't think 14
minutes), but also liable to crash. (For a blind person this is of
course more problematical.)

Anyway! I often did want to know if something I'd done _had_ improved
the boot time (when I left [I only visit about twice a year] it was down
to about 3 to 5 minutes - long but usable, if the PC is just left on
[it's now quite responsive once it's finished booting]). But - with all
the things going on during boot (such as the speech and Braille
interfaces initialising) - it isn't easy to tell when the boot process
is complete.

So: is there any way of setting something - preferably audible - to be
the _last_ thing that happens at boot, so that when it happens, you know
that everything else has finished?

(It's an XP SP3 system, without logon user prompt.)

It might be a definition problem as much as anything.
Maybe people won't agree on an official point where
boot has stopped, and some other activity has started.
In BootVis, they draw the line on some "shell" activity,
as seen in this trace. But I see "wgatray" running down
near the bottom, which means tray items are still loading
at that time.

http://attachments.techguy.org/attachments/119252d1194304456/bootvis-graphs.jpg

It gets really interesting, when looking at my laptop, and finding significant
ATI driver/control panel activity about two minutes after the desktop appears.
So is that part of booting or not ? There is a color adjustment that gets added after
that finishes. Since I reinstalled the OS on that laptop, that has stopped
happening.

Another possibility, is to make your definition be, when the last
file in ntbtlog has loaded. That's supposed to be the "normal" or
"built-in" record of boot activity, so perhaps the last file name
in that could be correlated with the bootvis trace.

To me the definition of boot finishing, is when "something
the user wants actually loads". I can attempt to do something
as tray items are launching, but one of the Microsoft tray items
upsets the desktop and menu, and can make a tool launch attempt
from the menus, disappear. Which is why for me, a precise definition
is hard to do.

*******

Bootvis is available here. It's provided by Microsoft for WinXP, is
discontinued and no longer available for download from Microsoft.
But you can still find copies and this one (1.3.37.0) 968K
is the one I tested. It worked well enough for me to get a trace.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/bootvis.html

There is some info on using it here, and it gave me
a hint I needed.

"USING BOOTVIS TO PROFILE THE BOOT PROCESS"

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sysinternals/archive/2002/08/12/452885.aspx

And another post in this very group today, mentions another
tool that does the same sort of thing. It might have been
this one. The description here mentions it parses a "binary ETL"
file. So maybe it's even possible for whatever Microsoft
facility generates that file, to work on that yourself
It doesn't mean the file is particularly readable (with
a hex editor), merely that there is a trace, which I consider
to be the hardest part. If the OS already has the instrumentation
in place, and it starts at t=0, that's the hardest part.

http://greatis.com/utilities/bootlogxp/bootvis_replacement.htm

Paul

 

[VanguardLH]

While following the "14 minute boot problem" thread, I am reminded of my
problem with my blind friend's computer. Last time I was there, I
managed to get her desktop back to a usable state (by sufficient
tinkering that I can't say for sure which if any single action did it);
it had become flaky - not just a very long boot (though I don't think 14
minutes), but also liable to crash. (For a blind person this is of
course more problematical.)

Anyway! I often did want to know if something I'd done _had_ improved
the boot time (when I left [I only visit about twice a year] it was down
to about 3 to 5 minutes - long but usable, if the PC is just left on
[it's now quite responsive once it's finished booting]). But - with all
the things going on during boot (such as the speech and Braille
interfaces initialising) - it isn't easy to tell when the boot process
is complete.

So: is there any way of setting something - preferably audible - to be
the _last_ thing that happens at boot, so that when it happens, you know
that everything else has finished?

(It's an XP SP3 system, without logon user prompt.)

Even if you added a startup item (Startup folder, Run key, scheduled
task) which loads after login to, say, run a program that makes a beep
sound, there is no guarantee all services have moved from the "started"
state to the "running" state (i.e., that they've finished loading).
Even startup items can take awhile to load. I have magicJack and
although it is configured via scheduled task to load on login the
program isn't done loading for a few minutes after login on my old
slower host (much faster on my new host).

Knowing when everything has completed its load and the computer is
otherwise quiescent is perhaps something that cannot be measured with
certainty. Most utilities that I've seen only measure until when the
desktop is displayed, not when the computer actually becomes usable
(below some threshold of responsiveness) or after all programs loaded in
memory are actually done initializing. They can catalog all startup
items and services and detect when they've been loaded but won't know
when those processes become quiescent (ready). Looking at the CPU usage
doesn't guarantee when that happens since usage could go low for awhile
and then slam back up when the program gets to more intense code. They
can tell you the Windows boot time but your computer could still be so
busy that it isn't usable for several more minutes.

Such an alert utility would have to detect when all services set to
Automatic start mode have changed to "running" status. It would have to
detect not only when all startup items have been loaded into memory but
also somehow detect when they were done initializing. The vast majority
of software doesn't have "probe points" to monitor when they claim to be
in ready state. It could wait until all services when into running
state and all startup processes were loaded into memory and then monitor
CPU usage to wait some specified number of seconds to ensure that CPU
usage remains under a configured threshold (averaged over another
configured interval to avoid spikes that you won't even see in Task
Manager from resetting the timer).

For your blind friend, it seems the easiest scheme might be to use a
batch (.bat) file to load the braille program followed by a program that
issues a beep. The normal startup item for the braille program would be
replaced with the batch file. Alas, this probably won't work. In the
batch file, it would hang waiting on the exit of the braille program
before the beep program got ran. If the 'start' command is used to load
the program, it doesn't wait for that program to exit so the beep
program gets ran immediately after the 'start' command; however,
obviously 'start' isn't waiting for the braille program to become ready,
so the beep is heard right after starting the load of the braille
program. Seems your user should submit a request to the braille program
author to add an option to issue a distinctive or user-selectable sound
when that program becomes ready for use.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

So: is there any way of setting something - preferably audible - to
be the _last_ thing that happens at boot, so that when it happens,
you know that everything else has finished?
(It's an XP SP3 system, without logon user prompt.)

It might be a definition problem as much as anything.
Maybe people won't agree on an official point where
boot has stopped, and some other activity has started.

Good point!

In BootVis, they draw the line on some "shell" activity,
as seen in this trace. But I see "wgatray" running down
near the bottom, which means tray items are still loading
at that time. []
To me the definition of boot finishing, is when "something
the user wants actually loads". I can attempt to do something
as tray items are launching, but one of the Microsoft tray items
upsets the desktop and menu, and can make a tool launch attempt
from the menus, disappear. Which is why for me, a precise definition
is hard to do.

Indeed. On the computer in question (and, for that matter, on this one),
I _can_ start things before the boot processes have "settled down" as it
were. But, as you say, the remaining processes can break or at least
interfere with what I'm trying to start.

*******

Bootvis is available here. It's provided by Microsoft for WinXP, is
discontinued and no longer available for download from Microsoft.
But you can still find copies and this one (1.3.37.0) 968K
is the one I tested. It worked well enough for me to get a trace.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/bootvis.html

There is some info on using it here, and it gave me
a hint I needed.

"USING BOOTVIS TO PROFILE THE BOOT PROCESS"

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sysinternals/archive/2002/08/12/452885.aspx

After someone (probably you) mentioned it, and in particular posted a
trace like that one, I obtained it and tried it on the computer in
question when I was there in September, in an attempt to find what
was/is taking the time at boot. I will admit I couldn't make too much
sense of the result - I might try again next time I visit (January).

And another post in this very group today, mentions another
tool that does the same sort of thing. It might have been
this one. The description here mentions it parses a "binary ETL"
file. So maybe it's even possible for whatever Microsoft
facility generates that file, to work on that yourself
It doesn't mean the file is particularly readable (with
a hex editor), merely that there is a trace, which I consider

If I couldn't make sense of BootVis's nice graphical output, something
requiring a hex editor to view the results I have no chance with (-:!

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

So: is there any way of setting something - preferably audible - to be
the _last_ thing that happens at boot, so that when it happens, you know
that everything else has finished?

(It's an XP SP3 system, without logon user prompt.)

Even if you added a startup item (Startup folder, Run key, scheduled
task) which loads after login to, say, run a program that makes a beep
sound, there is no guarantee all services have moved from the "started"
state to the "running" state (i.e., that they've finished loading).
Even startup items can take awhile to load. I have magicJack and
although it is configured via scheduled task to load on login the
program isn't done loading for a few minutes after login on my old
slower host (much faster on my new host).

As Paul says, there's also the question of how you _define_ when boot
_has_ finished: I'd thought it would be definable, but perhaps not.
[]

For your blind friend, it seems the easiest scheme might be to use a
batch (.bat) file to load the braille program followed by a program that
issues a beep. The normal startup item for the braille program would be
replaced with the batch file. Alas, this probably won't work. In the
batch file, it would hang waiting on the exit of the braille program
before the beep program got ran. If the 'start' command is used to load
the program, it doesn't wait for that program to exit so the beep
program gets ran immediately after the 'start' command; however,
obviously 'start' isn't waiting for the braille program to become ready,
so the beep is heard right after starting the load of the braille

The prog. is quite complex - it is a "screen reader" (that name for this
type of software is now incorrect, but it has remained the phrase in the
VH/VI community), which gets its claws into the operating system, and
provides speech and Braille output for everything (ideally) that the
computer does: it doesn't "finish". Actually, it does give a spoken
announcement: "JAWS for Windows is ready."

program. Seems your user should submit a request to the braille program
author to add an option to issue a distinctive or user-selectable sound
when that program becomes ready for use.

I guess the above satisfies that requirement. But I don't think that is
necessarily the last thing that loads on this particular machine.