When Microsoft developed Windows 7 a dedicated team was assigned to focus on startup performance. For details, read the Engineering Windows 7 – Boot Performance blog post. So what about your startup performance? . My colleague Rudi vanden Dries has been using a utility called BootRacer since a few months which provides a simple way of measuring system startup performance.

Documentation, Download details and a short demonstration video can be found here

If you get tasked to do some system troubleshooting and you just want to get as many information possible from a client, then have a look at the Microsoft Product Support Report Tool and the Product Support Reports Viewer.

The Microsoft Product Support Reports Viewer 2.0 can be downloaded from here and the Microsoft Product Support Reports from here

First launch the Microsoft Product Support Tool, which is a self-extracting executable (no installation needed). Once launched you can select the diagnostics you want to execute, then select Next to get the Diagnostic (Data Collection) started. Note that depending on the diagnostics selected, this process can take a while (up to 25 minutes).

Once the Diagnostic process has completed you can browse, e-mail or save the results. When saving the results, all data is stored in a single CAB file.

The Microsoft Product Support Report Viewer provides an interface to view the collected diagnostic data, which consists of several individual XML files.

While the diagnostic tool was running on my client, I copied the content of the temporary folder that the tool creates within the users TEMP folder into another folder. (if you have many folders in your TEMP folder just sort by date, and open the one with the newest date).

Within that folder you will find a Tools folder which contains all the executables and scripts used by the Diagnosis Tool.

So next time you get one of these famous calls to help solving a system problem, consider using this tool to gather detailed system information data.

Today’s ToolTip is about SoftPerfect Connection Emulator SCE. As the name says the software allows you to emulate different connection types. Unfortunately the tool is not for free, but I found the software nice enough to give it a try and eventually buy it especially since I haven’t been able to find a free alternative yet.

SCE allows you to simulate different network speeds such as modem, ISDN or DSL. You can either choose one of the predefined speed settings or configure your own. Furthermore you can configure the Latency and Packet loss rates. I tested SCE by configuring various network speeds and then used Speedtest.net to check the results and they were very accurate.

A fully functional trial version with a 30 seconds session limit can be downloaded from here

This is an excellent article written by Darren Mar-Elia author of gpoguy.com and founder of sdmsoftware. The article provides guidance for optimizing Group Policy Performance. Read the entire article here

if you found the previous post Windows 7 Service Triggers interesting, then you will like this utility too. The Service Trigger Editor provided by Core Technologies Consulting LLC is a FREE utility providing a UI to list and edit Service Triggers.

The Tool can be downloaded from here and is ready to run (no installation required)

When taking a closer look at the Services in Windows 7 you will notice that many of them are configured to start manually but will be started when needed. For more details read my earlier posts Windows Services, what changed from Vista to Windows7 Part1 and Windows Services, What changed from Vista to Windows7 – Part2.

The technology behind starting Services when needed is called Service Triggers that were introduced with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. If you want the full inside scoop on Service Triggers I recommend that you read through the content listed below.

In simple words Service Triggers help improve system performance by not having Services just running in the background if not needed. Let’s have a look at the Computer Browser Service which by default is configured to start manually but when I took the screenshot it was actually started.

So let’s open a command prompt and enter the following command:SC qtriggerinfo BROWSER

As you can see from the above screenshot this Service has Service Triggers defined. The Computer Browser Service will start as soon as the Firewall port opens and stops when these ports are closed.

I’m writing this article at home where my laptop is connected to the Wireless LAN, so when I disable my Wireless connection, no traffic should go through the firewall anymore, hence the Computer Browser should stop. And indeed 60 seconds after I have disconnected the laptop from the Wireless LAN, the Computer Browser Service is stopped.

Reconnecting the laptop to the Wireless LAN immediately triggers the Computer Browser Service to start again.

Now let’s run the same command against another Service: SC qtriggerinfo DHCP

In this case no Service Triggers are defined.

Additional Resources (that will keep you busy for a while)
Windows 7 Trigger-Start Services
Windows7 Trigger Start Services – Part 1: Introduction
Windows7 Trigger Start Services – Part 2: Building a Trigger Start Optimized Service
Chittur Subbaraman: Inside Windows 7 – Service Controller and Background Processing
How to create a trigger-start Windows service in Windows 7
MSDN – Service Triggers
The Code Project – Windows 7 Trigger Start Service
Using SC to manage Service Triggers

Just found this nice little FREE Utility. AppTimer from PassMark Software will run an executable a number of times and time how long it takes for the application to reach a state where user input is being accepted before exiting the application.

AppTimer can be downloaded from here