My new zone

[lh]

I created a new 'boot' zone in my scripts

  FileSelect
    ImportListFromFile("C:\Program Files\MyDefrag v4.1.2\Scripts\Boot.Lst")
  FileActions
    SortByImportSequence(Ascending)
    AddGap(UntilPercentageOfVolumeMultiple(0.5))
  FileEnd

This idea here is to speed up boot times.  As the windows one puts things in there that I haven't touched in a year.  I would use hibernate but for some reason  my  laptop likes to wake up in the middle of the night and then never go off again.  So I shutdown at night.

Here is what I do to get Boot.Lst.  I use procmon from MS.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

ProcMon has an option to run a trace while the computer is starting up.  I do one cycle of that.  Then I start procmon up again.  This then informs me that I have a boot trace.  I save it (it will be big).  I then set the filter on the program to only show things from the C:\ drive (as some programs just open c: those are volume requests).  Also filter out anything from procmon itself (procmon.pmb, and procmon64.exe, as it will be creating that crazy huge log).  I then also exclude \* (as some programs open up things like this).  I could add this to my script but this is just a quick and dirty way to get what I want quickly.

Then I open up tools->file summary.  This gives a very nice list of total time spent in each file which I sort by.  The idea here is to move the slowest files to the front of the disk.  I then save this file as startlist.csv.  I then run my python script against it to strip out the extra junk.  I then redirect the output into Boot.Lst.

This shaved off a few seconds off my boot.  Now if I can just figure out why media center likes to take over my computer at boot to get it schedules I would be good.

I did my zones like this ntfssystemfiles/directories/mybootlist/importlistfrombootoptimize/otherfiles/spacehogs.

I have also noticed that procmon doesnt track time totally accurately though.  As when running mydefrag it will show many files taking 0 seconds on 15 gig files being moved to the end of the disk.

[jeroen]

As the windows one puts things in there that I haven't touched in a year.

The Windows "%SystemRoot%\Prefetch\Layout.ini" may contain some files that you would not expect, but it can only list files that were really accessed while booting. Are you sure the file has been updated (perhaps updating was turned off)? See the MyDefrag ImportListFromBootOptimize manpage for extra information.

[lh]

Ah indeed you are correct I had disabled it somehow.  I had disabled the readyboost and superfetch due to the fact they were taking over my computer for 2-5 mins after I started up my computer.  Probably readyboost updates the readyboost dir in the prefetcher directory.  Then the ProcessIdleTasks thing updates the ini file.  Since I had those disabled it was not updating it (mine was last touched in march).  Now one interesting side effect of just using the ini file is that my shutdown is now 'slow'.  Which makes sense because the files involved would be in my list because procmon would have recorded it.

So the moral of the story is if you disable readyboost and superfetch you might like the method I use.