How to monitor programs and services on Windows startup?

Question

I am looking for a way to have a kind of a simple --verbose log of all programs and services activities on Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, etc.) startup.

Ideally it would show the name (and path), the memory allocated, the starting and ending runtime and the services that invoked (if it's an application), but I would be glad as well with just a names log.

It may be as simple as a command that is run before all the non-core windows stuff that can dump > startup_services.log and > startup_apps.log (probably would stop logging 2-3 minutes after booting). Is there such a thing already in the cmd line that can be used for this purpose?

Edit

This question was being marked as duplicate of another one, but that question has an answer for one part of my question: boot logging processes. I wanted as well a services log and if possible a simple way to save the log. David's answer below provided other ways to achieve this, and one of them generates the log to a CSV file, which in some cases is preferable to the heavy .PML files generated by the Process Monitor (PM) that can only be opened by the PM itself.

Answer 1

How do I monitor programs and services on Windows startup?

Windows services starting up are logged as events in the System Event log.

• Are there any log file about Windows Services Status? expands on this.

• MyEventViewer, by Nirsoft allows you to easily export Windows Event Logs to a comma separated file.

• How to Create Your Own Windows Event Log Notification System presents a nice automated way to use MyEventViewer to send emails for example and/or save the filtered results file (csv format).

• Process Monitor (from SysInternals/Microsoft) will track boot time and provide a dump file of all system and file activity during the boot process. See How to find what is causing Windows 7 Desktop pause for more information.

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Disclaimer

I am not affiliated with any of the above software products in any way, I am just an end user of the software.

I've no idea how many of them will work on older version of Windows.

Answer 2

The command tasklist in Windows Command Prompt shows a static snapshot of all running programs and services, but it sounds like you need a process monitoring program. Sysinternals.com (on Microsoft Technet) has a free process monitor you can customize with your own filtering rules.

Sysinternals.com also has a Startup Monitor called Autoruns (also on Microsoft Technet) which may suit your needs more specifically than a regular process monitor.