Speed is always the most important parameter in computer science, the one on which software and hardware developers focus on improving their products. Speaking of operating systems, Microsoft has greatly improved the boot speed of the computer in Windows 10, especially if some hardware requirements are met. All users of a PC have had to deal with the slowdown of the system startup process, noting how the computer takes more and more time to turn on than it did when it was just bought or with Windows just installed.
A lot has been written and talked about how to speed up Windows startup but, before making any changes or using automatic programs, it is better to know how long the computer actually takes to turn on .
Those who have Windows 7, Windows 10 and 8.1 can measure the speed with which the computer turns on and also the time taken to turn off through the Windows event viewer .
The Windows Event Log provides an easy way to check for errors or warning messages and take countermeasures.
READ ALSO: Measure loading time of programs (Windows 10)
The Event Viewer is the Windows log and records everything that happens on the computer, including installations, hardware errors, programs used, processes started and stopped, permissions, network connections, etc. Each event is identified by an ID number and assigned a severity level ranging from Critical to Information.
To open the Events viewer you have to go to the Start menu and then write in the Search field or in the Run the eventvwr command field and press Enter. The Windows 10 Event Viewer shows a tree structure with the categories of events in the left sidebar, the list of events in the center and the actions on the right.
The events that show the time taken by the computer to turn on are those with the ID number 100 while those that concern the shutdown have the number 200 . Without looking in the pile, in Windows 7 you can view the logs of power on and off by opening the following path from the tree menu on the left:
Application and Service Logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Diagnostics-Performance -> Operational .
The list of events is sorted in chronological order, by date and time and in another column the ID number is indicated which is either 100 (turning on the computer) or 200 (stopping).
If you click on one of the lines you can see the details of that event.
Each time you press on an event 100 you can read the startup time of the computer in milliseconds (for example Startup duration: 82526ms).
This value must be divided by 1000 to find the time in seconds (in the example, 82 seconds).
If the startup duration was greater than 60 seconds, the event viewer shows an Error, if instead it is measuring a time greater than 100 seconds it would show the symbol of the critical error as it would be too long.
An online converter can be used to convert milliseconds to seconds or minutes.
If the startup duration of the computer is always too long (therefore comparing the startup duration for several days), greater than one minute or 100 seconds, there may be some problems: either the computer is too underpowered for Windows 7 or there are too many programs starting.
With the MSConfig diagnostic tool you can fix Windows startup problems and see if you can disable any entries from the automatic startup.
The best program to automatically optimize the computer power on is Autoruns available for Windows 10 and Windows 7.
Whenever you install a new program that requires automatic start, you can use this information about the total turn-on time to measure its impact.
The same can be said for the duration of the computer shutdown which, at times, slows down or freezes because of programs and processes that you do not want to close.
In another article, the guide to shutdown the computer faster .
Those who want a rocket ignition can try to turn off the PC with automatic restart and hibernation.
To measure computer startup time you can use some free programs to measure computer startup time that work on Windows 7, 8 and 10 .
1) Bootracer on which you only need to press the Start button to restart the computer and obtain the total start-up time.
2) AppTimer, an executable freeware that measures the PC boot time.
3) Boot Analyzer with more modern interface to see the detail of the computer startup.
Finally, TurnedOnTimesView is a simple free tool that reads the Windows event log, re-elaborates it and extracts the data concerning the startup and shutdown of the computer making them easy to read.
Put simply, it provides a log indicating the precise time of each power-up or restart .
Extract the archive and then, without installing anything, start the program from the executable file to see the whole log of when the PC was turned on ( Startup Time ), when it was stopped ( Shutdown Time ) and the duration of what remained on .
Duration gives an exact idea of how long the PC has been used.
The fifth column gives an indication of the type of shutdown, whether it was a normal shutdown or an error restart.
The stop code of the last column can be searched on this page to understand what type of error has occurred.
The log can be saved as an HTML report.
READ ALSO: Reduce BIOS and PC boot time
