How can I time my startups and see what processes are taking the longest?

Question

I want to be able to profile my startups and see how long each program takes to startup. I'm running windows 7.

Answer 1

Soluto does exactly what you are looking for.

Soluto Beta allows you to understand your boot, discover which applications are slowing it down (and keep running later in the background, affecting your ongoing experience), and allows you to significantly improve it. While Soluto Beta focuses on the boot, it already researches for frustrations and helps map the PC Genome, and allows you to share your wisdom with others.

Screenshots taken from the lifehacker article.

Answer 2

If you are talking about startups that load when you boot the PC, see the link below, it was written for Vista but applies to W7 as well. There is a lot of info logged by W7.

ZDNet - Microsoft's hidden diagnostic tool unlocks Vista startup secrets

Answer 3

There is also the Windows Performance Analyzer, part of the Windows Performance Toolkit, which you can get from the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit.

This utility allows you to collect information during boot for a variety of situations or needed metrics, and then view that information in a graphical interface that allows you to quickly see what portions of the boot or login process are taking the most time, and then what processes in those portions are the culprits.

The interface is not as simple as Soluto's, and it doesn't try to rate whether items are useful or not, but as a power-user tool for measuring and diagnosing boot time issues, it's a very, very capable tool.