New paper answers the question: Why does my computer take so long to boot or shutdown?
Well, maybe you should be using standby. But often people just don't want to use standby, whether it is a laptop with a small battery, or maybe a desktop that you want to eliminate all power being fed to the device. Check this paper from the Windows Fundamentals perf team to figure out exactly what happens in Windows during these state changes. Learn how to trace the boot, resume and shutdown processes from hardware, software and user session perspectives. A gread read:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/On-Off_Transition.mspx