How to Time Boot and perform Boot Trace in Windows 11

The Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit aka Windows ADK offers a performance analysis tool—xbootmgr—that can help you to time boot and also perform a boot trace in Windows 11/10.  The kit is also used to measure the quality and performance of systems or components.

Included in the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit, the Windows Performance Toolkit consists of performance monitoring tools.

How to Time Boot & perform a Boot Trace in Windows

The ADK includes tools such as Windows Configuration Designer, Windows Pre-installation Environment (WinPE), Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM), Windows System Image Manager (WSIM), Windows Assessment Toolkit, Windows Performance Toolkit, User State Migration Toolkit (USMT), Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT), User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) and Application Virtualization (App-V).

xbootmgr tool

This command can be used to initiate boot tracing or aboard a scheduled tracing.  You can trace regular boot or standby or reboot and even fast startup. If you face any issue with any of these, it is the best tool to get it done. However, you will also need to understand the technical aspect when looking at the trace logs.

To initiate tracing:

xbootmgr -trace boot|hibernate|standby|shutdown|rebootCycle|fastStartup [options]

To abort tracing:

xbootmgr -remove

Here is how to use various options and save the result in a folder. Do note that as soon as you execute the command, it will restart the system. So make sure you save all your work.

For boot tracing:

xbootmgr -trace boot -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP

For shutdown tracing:

xbootmgr -trace shutdown -noPrepReboot -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP

For Standby+Resume:

xbootmgr -trace standby -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP

For Hibernate+Resume:

xbootmgr -trace hibernate -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP

For example:

For boot tracing:

xbootmgr -trace boot -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP

For shutdown tracing:

xbootmgr -trace shutdown -noPrepReboot -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP

For Standby+Resume:

xbootmgr -trace standby -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP

For Hibernate+Resume:

xbootmgr -trace hibernate -traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER -resultPath C:\TEMP

Replace C:\TEMP with any temp directory on your machine as necessary to store the output files

These will shut down, hibernate, standby the computer, and then reboot to finish tracing. Once Windows does reboot, log back in as necessary, and once the countdown timer finishes, you should now have some tracing files in C:\TEMP. If asked, upload or provide the file(s) generated in C:\TEMP (or the directory you chose) on a download share for analysis.

Download the ADK tool for Windows from Microsoft. The ADK tool is used by OEMs and ODM to customize Windows images, access the quality and performance system or components when setting up a new computer.

Reads to help you:

• How to speed up Windows
• Free software to measure Boot or Startup Time
• Make Windows boot faster using Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics.

I hope the post helps you perform a boot trace in Windows 11/10.