Innovative Technology Weblog

Windows 7 is often initiated for its performance like XP and unlike Vista. Too often the actual performance is measured by hand. By stopwatch! Please stop doing this and start reading this inventive blog post.

Microsoft provides a free tool to measure the performance automatically. An improved toolkit is coming with Windows 8. For now we can perfectly live with the current toolkit. Let’s get started.  

In this post I will explain how easy it can be to measure the performance of any Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 system. I will also provide some practical advice how to create a report that adds value.

Note: Because of the Prefetch feature of Windows 7 it is highly recommended to prepare your test machine (referred to as ‘prepsystem’).

Start measuring

Your system needs to have installed: 

• Windows Vista or higher (Windows XP does work but shows fewer results). Server system 2008 or higher.
• .NET framework 4
• Local admin priveliges

Now start with installing the magic tooling:

• Download the WPA toolkit
• Install ‘xbootmgr’ and ‘xperf’ (x86 or x64)
• Create a temporary folder (c:\temp)
• Open a CMD with admin priveliges

Copy and past the following line in the CMD window:

xbootmgr -trace boot -traceFlags DiagEasy -resultPath C:\TEMP -numruns 10 rebootCycle –prepSystem

This will happen:

• Perform a trace for the time the pc boots (-trace boot)
• Specificy the info details measured (-traceflags –diageasy)
• Copy the results to ‘c:\temp’ (the .elt files)
• Do this 10 times (reboot will go automatic, login by hand unless you specify / a number of 10 is a best practice average)
• (option) Prepare yout test system 6x (2 times 3 with a break) 

Create results

Create a XML summary file:

• For every .ETL file run this command:

xperf /tti -i c:\temp\YourFile.etl -o summary_boot.xml -a boot

Write down the values for 1) bootDoneViaExplorer, 2) bootDoneViaPostBoot and 3)

1. PreSMSS
2. SMSSInit
3. WinlogonInit
4. ExplorerInit
5. PostExplorerPeriod
6. TraceTail

All values in milliseconds, so x100 for seconds.

Time to logon

Now what is the measured value for the logon time? This is the sum of the values : WinLogonInit, ExplorerInit and PostExplorerPeriod. The value of bootDoneViaExplorer indicates the total startup time.

However, the value of WinloginInit start counting on the moment that the login screen is shown. Meaning that typing userID and password is measured too as part of logon. This is why autologon is preferrred. On a domain joined machine this can be automated too (just Google)

Summary

• Install the WPA toolkit on your Windows 7 test machine
• Run a performance test and create a report
• Give me some results!

This post is inspired on the following websites:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/140247-trace-windows-7-bootshutdownhibernatestandbyresume-issues (generic guide)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff191001(v=vs.85).aspx (xbootmgr)

http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/windows7/windows7_auto_logon.htm (autologon)