Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?

Things Windows 10 has to content with when executing a new binary, that Windows 3.51 didn't

1. Windows Defender anti-virus checking the binary and contacting MS' server for binary signing/black list

2. Kernel32 trampolines

3. All sorts of security mitigation techniques such as stack cookies setup etc.

4. Telemetry

5. Hardware accelerated GUI initiation vs 'dump everything to frame buffer in kernel GUI32 library'

6. Load fonts, graphics etc. that can work well beyond 640x480

7. Deal with the scheduler juggling hundreds of processes that let you from accessing winsock2 lib immediately, to have multiplex sound mixing, to system restore, all in the background.

> Windows Defender anti-virus checking the binary and contacting MS' server for binary signing/black list

Are you sure this happens every time you start an executable? I assumed the definition list gets updated in fixed intervals instead of whenever you launch a program.

sure, makes me wonder how much of this list could be scratched w/o anyone noticing.

PS: ran w2k on a 1600x1200 21" crt

i would assume that the information "when does user start program" is valuable and the list is finite, so there is some incentive to go for something in between.

8. Maybe out of topic but animations delaying the display of the window (can be disabled but is not on the video)

Windows 10 LTSC removes a lot of the crap - and even with defender and some of the other stuff you are talking about here it is insane responsive.

It depends, fonts sucked bad in windows those days.

Good analysis.

> 5. Hardware accelerated GUI initiation vs 'dump everything to frame buffer in kernel GUI32 library'

Even on my fast workstation, this seems to account for most of the percieved startup latency in modern, well-written GUI applications. The Nvidia drivers seem to do this stupid signature check every time a d3d11 device is created..