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BootVis is a Microsoft computer application that allows "PC system designers and software developers" (not aimed at end-users) to check how long a Windows XP machine takes to boot, and then to optimize the boot process, sometimes considerably reducing the time required. BootVis has been replaced with XbootMgr, [1] and is no longer available from Microsoft's website. [2]
BootVis defines boot and resume times as the time from when the power switch is pressed to the time at which the user is able to start a program from a desktop shortcut. The application measures time taken during Windows XP's boot or resume period. BootVis can also invoke the optimization routines built into Windows XP, such as defragmenting the files accessed during boot, to improve startup performance. This optimization is automatically done by Windows at three-day intervals. [3]
Because the Global Logger session used by BootVis is triggered by registry entries, it runs every time that the entries appear in the registry, which has resulted in some users seeing large quantities of hard drive being used for the trace.log file (in C:\WINDOWS\System32\LogFiles\WMI). Upon rebooting the file will shrink but will grow again as the computer runs. The user can run BootVis again and click Trace→Stop Tracing, which will stop the file from growing and allow it to be safely deleted. [4] [5] The Bootvis.exe tool is no longer available from Microsoft. [2]
Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me, often capitalized as Windows ME, is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was officially codenamed as Millennium. It is the successor to Windows 98, and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and then to retail on September 14, 2000. It was Microsoft's main operating system for home users until the introduction of its successor Windows XP in October 2001.
NTLDR is the boot loader for all releases of Windows NT operating system from 1993 with the release of Windows NT 3.1 up until Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. From Windows Vista onwards it was replaced by the BOOTMGR bootloader. NTLDR is typically run from the primary storage device, but it can also run from portable storage devices such as a CD-ROM, USB flash drive, or floppy disk. NTLDR can also load a non NT-based operating system given the appropriate boot sector in a file.
AUTOEXEC.BAT is a system file that was originally on DOS-type operating systems. It is a plain-text batch file in the root directory of the boot device. The name of the file is an abbreviation of "automatic execution", which describes its function in automatically executing commands on system startup; the filename was coined in response to the 8.3 filename limitations of the FAT file system family.
The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and user interfaces can all use the registry. The registry also allows access to counters for profiling system performance.
System Restore is a feature in Microsoft Windows that allows the user to revert their computer's state to that of a previous point in time, which can be used to recover from system malfunctions or other problems. First included in Windows Me, it has been included in all following desktop versions of Windows released since, excluding Windows Server. In Windows 10, System Restore is turned off by default and must be enabled by users in order to function. This does not affect personal files such as documents, music, pictures, and videos.
Winlogon is the component of Microsoft Windows operating systems that is responsible for handling the secure attention sequence, loading the user profile on logon, creates the desktops for the window station, and optionally locking the computer when a screensaver is running. In Windows Vista and later operating systems, the roles and responsibilities of Winlogon have changed significantly.
System File Checker (SFC) is a utility in Microsoft Windows that allows users to scan for and restore corrupted Windows system files.
In computing, SUBST is a command on the DOS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows and ReactOS operating systems used for substituting paths on physical and logical drives as virtual drives.
As the next version of Windows NT after Windows 2000, as well as the successor to Windows Me, Windows XP introduced many new features but it also removed some others.
The booting process of Windows NT is the process run to start Windows NT. The process has been changed between releases, with the biggest changes being made with Windows Vista. In versions before Vista, the booting process begins when the BIOS loads the Windows NT bootloader, NTLDR. Starting with Vista, the booting process begins with either the BIOS or UEFI load the Windows Boot Manager, which replaces NTLDR as the bootloader. Next, the bootloader starts the kernel, which starts the session manager, which begins the login process. Once the user is logged in, File Explorer, the graphical user interface used by Windows NT, is started.
The Prefetcher is a component of Microsoft Windows which was introduced in Windows XP. It is a component of the Memory Manager that can speed up the Windows boot process and shorten the amount of time it takes to start up programs. It accomplishes this by caching files that are needed by an application to RAM as the application is launched, thus consolidating disk reads and reducing disk seeks. This feature was covered by US patent 6,633,968.
ntoskrnl.exe, also known as the kernel image, contains the kernel and executive layers of the Microsoft Windows NT kernel, and is responsible for hardware abstraction, process handling, and memory management. In addition to the kernel and executive mentioned earlier, it contains the cache manager, security reference monitor, memory manager, scheduler (Dispatcher), and blue screen of death.
In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manager, the component responsible for managing Windows services. It is the Services and Controller app, services.exe, that launches all the services and manages their actions, such as start, end, etc.
The Session Manager Subsystem, or smss.exe, is a component of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems, starting in Windows NT 3.1. It is executed during the startup process of those operating systems.
Microsoft Drive Optimizer is a utility in Microsoft Windows designed to increase data access speed by rearranging files stored on a disk to occupy contiguous storage locations, a technique called defragmentation. Defragmenting a disk minimizes head travel, which reduces the time it takes to read files from and write files to the disk. As a result of the decreased read and write times, Microsoft Drive Optimizer decreases system startup times for systems starting from magnetic storage devices such as a hard drive. However, defragmentation is not helpful on storage devices such as solid state drives, USB drives or SD cards that use flash memory to increase speeds, as these drives do not use a head. Defragmentation may decrease lifespan for certain technologies, e.g. solid state drives. Microsoft Drive Optimizer was first officially shipped with Windows XP.
The booting process of Microsoft Windows varies between different releases.
Windows Vista has many significant new features compared with previous Microsoft Windows versions, covering most aspects of the operating system.
Windows Vista contains a range of new technologies and features that are intended to help network administrators and power users better manage their systems. Notable changes include a complete replacement of both the Windows Setup and the Windows startup processes, completely rewritten deployment mechanisms, new diagnostic and health monitoring tools such as random access memory diagnostic program, support for per-application Remote Desktop sessions, a completely new Task Scheduler, and a range of new Group Policy settings covering many of the features new to Windows Vista. Subsystem for UNIX Applications, which provides a POSIX-compatible environment is also introduced.
Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) is a suite of utilities for Microsoft Windows customers who have subscribed to Microsoft Software Assurance program. It aims at bringing easier manageability and monitoring of enterprise desktops, emergency recovery, desktop virtualization and application virtualization.
Service Control Manager (SCM) is a special system process under the Windows NT family of operating systems, which starts, stops and interacts with Windows service processes. It is located in the %SystemRoot%\System32\services.exe executable. Service processes interact with SCM through a well-defined API, and the same API is used internally by the interactive Windows service management tools such as the MMC snap-in Services.msc and the command-line Service Control utility sc.exe. Terminating this file is used as a method of causing the Blue Screen of Death.
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