Trying to remember the name of a piece of Microsft diagnostic software for Windows...

This piece of software was definitely made by Microsoft.

Basically, you ran it, and then you would reboot your computer. Starting at the next boot, it would begin to log everything that loads on your computer until you shut off the diagnostic tool. It was primarily used for boot diagnostics but it recorded everything after boot as well, such as which applications were loading and when. Inexperienced users had a tendency to forget about it, and the log would inevitably soar to several GB in size because it would log EVERYTHING and as I recall, it had no obvious interface and it would persist between boots if you didn't shut it off.

I can't remember the name of this tool to save my life, but I do remember it was a Microsoft tool. I used it years ago to diagnose a problem on my PC and I'd like to use it again. Does anyone have any idea what this was?

 

Process Monitor http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645 will do it

 

Assuming you are talking about XP...perhaps

Boot Log XP is the best Windows boot analyze
Use BootVis to improve XP boot

 

That was BootViz. However, Microsoft removed it from their download section quite a long time ago. Apparently there were some issues with it, which was the reason why they removed it.

 

No.... Apparently they didn’t like end-users using BootVis.

Sept 2003 when they removed the download, they made an statement;

Microsoft - "Please note that Bootvis.exe is not a tool that will improve boot/resume performance for end users. Contrary to some published reports, Bootvis.exe cannot reduce or alter a system's boot or resume performance. The boot optimization routines invoked by Bootvis.exe are built into Windows XP. These routines run automatically at pre-determined times as part of the normal operation of the operating system."

 

Yes and no. Since my memory isn't quite what it used to be, I googled around and actually found the article I remember reading back then, written by Eric Vaughan at tweakhound.com.

On a P4 with multi-threading a hotfix had to be applied first, which maybe not everyone was doing. This tool wasn't intended for home users anyway, but rather for OEMs.

 

the funny thing was that bootvis really did improve boot times. You could even prove this with the bootvis tool itself..

 

It is!