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The information displayed when a Windows system starts or shuts down is too simple. This makes very complicated to find the sources of a problem. For example, on a normal shut down you will see just two messages, Logging off:

and Shutting down:

When Windows starts displays Please Wait… following by a Welcome message. In this post we will see how to show more detailed information about the process.

First you have to open the Group Policy Editor. To know more about how to use this tool visit this post: Working with the Group Policy Editor (Windows 7, Vista, XP).  To do this press WinKey + R, type gpedit.msc and press Enter.

Go to Local Computer Policy, Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System.

On the right pane select Verbose vs normal status messages:

Enable it and select ok:

Now you can see more messages describing the different steps:

About Angel Luis

I am an Engineer of Telecommunications that love computers. My first computer was a Commodore 16kb, about 25 years ago and since then I am always fighting computers problems. Please visit my entries and ask me about whatever problem you have, I will be pleased to help you. My email is discoveryourpc [at] gmail [dot] com. You can follow me on twitter @agenlu or read my blog www.discoveryourpc.net

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Comments

10 thoughts on “Display Each Step In The Process Of Starting, Shutting Down The System”

  1. bgonos says:

    Good post. Thanks, I was wondering where those messages are enabled from, but what if Group Policy is Disabled?

  2. RSVR85 says:

    For those without the Group Policy Editor, download & import this .reg file.

    1. Rich says:

      Thanks!

  3. Angel says:

    Thanks, again, for the file

  4. Angel says:

    You can use the file that RSVR85 has written and using it to change the registry. If you have problems doing that ask me again and I will show you how to do it with regedit.

  5. C Colin Backslash Enter says:

    Is there any way of capturing those screens during startup an dshutdown?

  6. Rich says:

    I'd say the best (possibly only) way is to run Windows in a virtual machine with these settings enabled and take screenshots of the VM.

    1. Angel says:

      That is the way I did. I tried to capture all of them but they changed very quickly.

      1. RSVR85 says:

        Best thing to do then is use screen recorder software and then pause at your specified time and screenshot away ;)

      2. Angel says:

        Good point. This is something I will use on next posts.

Comments are closed.


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