As seen on my screenshot I am using Wise Care 365 (free edition)

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Thanks for the response above..... 

Just fyi. 

1. I downloaded and tried WiseCare but it reports a boot time of 0,4 (I asume seconds).  This is a long way off the  boot time reported by the Windows operating system, which I can only assume is more informed.

2.  Boot time has reverted back to 133 seconds.

I see this in practice... where mostly it is circa 133 seconds, but some times in the 7-10 secs.

It obviously has a routine which is stalling its operation.

Perhaps it is waiting for network or peripheral connections.

None of the shortcuts I have link directly to usb c drives or network shares.  I have a link to MyComputer ... maybe this is waiting for network shares to come on stream.

If so, you should have a parameter to ignore such external connections.

There are several boot time analyzer programs available.

• MaaS360 Boot Analyzer: A free tool that provides detailed information about the boot activity of your computer. It has a clean and easy-to-understand interface, displaying a graph with details about the date and time when the boot mode was enabled.
• Windows Performance Toolkit: A set of tools designed for analyzing a wide range of performance problems, including application start times, boot issues, and system responsiveness.
• WinBootInfo: An old shareware tool that can analyze the boot process and log the information for viewing. It measures the load time of drivers, services, and executables, and records CPU and I/O activity.
• Soluto: A free tool that provides detailed information about the boot process, including the order of drivers and applications being loaded. It also allows you to remove unnecessary startup programs to improve boot times.

I recommend Windows Performance Toolkit which has a number of tools to analyze what's going on. You can read more here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/wpt/

Here are the steps.

1.  Ctrl Alt Del   [This is the quick way... other shortcuts possible.]

Select Task Manager 

2. Select StartUp Tab

It appears to default to showing start-up times in descending sequence of start-up times.

You should be able to debug your code... so you can reconcile the start-up times reported by Task Manager to the actual timestamps of your app.

Create a log file with time stamps and analyse where the big delays occur.

I suspect that your app is waiting for network connection or peripheral (eg USB printer, scanner, card reader).

Ignore these connections and load the app. Go back and refresh if you need to cater for slow connections..... but allow your app to finish and present to the user. More importantly ... it does not delay any other apps in the StartUp pipeline.

I just spotted the follow up comment.... will review as I am keen to find an industrial strength and reliable utility to record startup times of all drivers and apps.

It is a real pain to have high end hardware throttled by inefficient apps.  

My background is large scale enterprise level apps and infrastructure.  I always feel sorry for the end user who does not understand what goes on behind the scenes. I have written code in machine code and assembler and lots of other stuff.  Modern tools are so good there is no excuse for bad coding or unit/ system testing.

Also, a lot of people take (and pay)  for my advice but most of the time I am happy to provide expert advice foc.

I think your app has potential, otherwise I would not waste time making these comments.

But... it needs some refinements, which should be easy to code... but make a massive difference to the usability of your app.

👍