Using minLogon to speed up booting and decrease footprint

**Skraggy_uk** · 12-22-2004, 04:43 AM

At work ATM, but off the top of my my head I didn't change anything from the Zip when I unzipped it into the root of my Nlite build folder

[COMMANDS]
"REGEDIT /S fetlyd.reg"

**FetLyd** · 12-22-2004, 05:54 AM

If anyone wants the source for fetlyd.exe, here it is.. Coded in Delphi 4.. Please don't laugh!

Code:

program fetlyd;

uses
  Windows, SysUtils, Classes, Forms, registry, shellapi;

{$R *.RES}

var
  Reg: TRegistry;
  L1: TStringList;
  X: Integer;
  S: String;
begin
  Application.Initialize;
  renamefile(extractfilepath(application.exename)+'winlogon.exe', extractfilepath(application.exename)+'winlogon.bak');
  renamefile(extractfilepath(application.exename)+'minlogon.exe', extractfilepath(application.exename)+'winlogon.exe');
  try
    Reg := TRegistry.Create;
    L1 := TStringList.Create;

    Reg.RootKey := HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE;
    if Reg.OpenKey('\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon', True) then
    begin
      reg.GetValueNames(L1);

      For X := 0 to L1.Count -1 do
        Reg.DeleteValue(L1[X]);

      L1.Clear;
      reg.GetKeyNames(L1);

      For X := L1.Count -1 downto 0 do
        if L1[x] <> 'Credentials' then
          if L1[x] <> '' then
            reg.DeleteKey('\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon'+L1[X]);
    end;
    Reg.CloseKey;
    Reg.RootKey := HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE;
    Reg.LazyWrite := false;
    Reg.OpenKey('Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce', false);
    Reg.WriteString('Delete Me!','command.com /c del '+application.exename);
    Reg.WriteString('Delete Me! #2','command.com /c del '+extractfilepath(application.exename)+'minlogon.reg');
    Reg.CloseKey;
    WinExec(pchar('regedit.exe /s ' + extractfilepath(application.exename)+'minlogon.reg'), SW_SHOWNORMAL);
    ExitWindowsEx(ewx_Reboot,0);
  finally
    Reg.Free;
    L1.Free;
  end;
  Application.Run;
end.

**Skraggy_uk** · 12-22-2004, 06:00 AM

If it works don't knock it.

**FetLyd** · 12-22-2004, 06:03 AM

**Skraggy_uk** · 12-22-2004, 01:31 PM

Any suggestions why the commandlines.txt didn't work?

Would be interested in cracking this one, and moving onto adding other apps in a similar way, and enabling EWF, so when the hardware is assembled, the CarPC will be closer to going in.

**Skraggy_uk** · 12-22-2004, 03:01 PM

I've checked, and double checked, and even changed the path in the fetlyd.reg to read

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\RunOnce]
"Fetlyd"=fetlyd.exe
instead of
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce]
"Fetlyd"=fetlyd.exe

and it didn't work.

**Skraggy_uk** · 12-22-2004, 04:35 PM

BTW, some success, edited fetlyd.reg to read

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\RunOnce]
"Fetlyd"="C:\\Windows\\system32\\fetlyd.exe"

And it worked fine

**FetLyd** · 12-22-2004, 07:46 PM

That's weird.. My windows directory is also C:\windows, and it worked ok..

But anyways, I'll update the program to read %windir%\fetlyd.exe instead of just fetlyd.exe .. Thanks man!

BTW, Merry Christmas!

**momanz** · 12-22-2004, 09:36 PM

In case anyone is interested I managed to get things down to about a 10 sec app launch with frodoplayer as shell instead of explorer. One of the side effects of not having explorer as shell is that you get to see the OS component load times.

system specs
epia M10k
512meg ram
seagate 5400 rpm laptop drive
WinXP-SP2 default install + minlogin

Services running
Windows Audio, Event Log, Network Connections, Plug an Play, Remote procedure call, Task Scheduler, Windows Management Instrumentation

Prefetching is active.

The one thing (other than running many services) that seems to really make the time vary between 10-18 seconds is prefetching. A "bad" (for lack of a better work) boot prefetch file can result in boot times of 18-20 sec. I'm still learning about how prefetching works so if anyone has any insight into prefetching I'm all ears. Disabling prefetching results in about 14-18 sec app start time for frodo (depends on the services that are running).

One note on using Bootvis with frodo as shell. Bootvis will not automatically start up. You have to manually launch bootvis by configuring frodo's app launcher and launch bootvis. You should also add explorer to the app list in case you want to make some service changes etc. If you start a boot trace and do not stop it the trace file can become quite large...

Just thought I'd share.

-Momanz