What are the common issues that can cause slow boot times of Windows CE6 Images?

Question

I am relatively new to Platform Builder, and whilst I am able to produce nk.bin files, they boot very slowly, 80-100 seconds, so I think there may be some checkbox somewhere that I need to set (or clear)!

I've already removed kitl, profiling, etc in the project settings, and set the project to 'release build' & 'ship'.

When I looked at the startup event log (in debug), there doesn't appear to be any specific point where it is slow. The log pretty much scrolls all the way through with no major pauses.

One thing I found strange was that although the nk.bin file was a lot smaller in release build (just under 12Mb), the boot time didn't noticeably change from the debug build...

The board is a Vortex86DX_60A and I'm building CE6.

Are there any 'common builder mistakes' that I may be missing here, or is this going to be something a little deeper?

Answer 1

The #1 reaon for something like this is leaving KITL enabled in a release image. The device boots and waits for a minute or more for a PC/KITL connection before timing out.

Second is forgetting to set it to RELEASE mode. DEBUG version of drivers (and the kernel) have a lot of debug spew that slows things considerably.

If you've done both of these, then it sounds like you've probably got one or more driver issues (I know a Vortex86 will boot up in under 20s in most conditions). Generally when I write drivers, I like to have them report via RETAILMSG the amount of time they take to load (using GetTickCount at the top and bottom of Xxx_Init), which provides a quick sanity check that they are loading and how long they took.