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What does “delayed start” do in startup type for a windows service?

When I configure a service (from services.msc) as Automatic and delayed there is a fixed (static) time set to delay time? Or it is dynamically allocated from some boot parameter?

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Take reference to: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4038569/what-does-delayed-start-do-in-startup-type-for-a-windows-service

A service marked as Automatic (Delayed Start) will start shortly after all other services designated as Automatic have been started. In my experience, this means that they are started 1-2 minutes after the computer boots.

The setting is most useful in lessening the "mad rush" for resources when a machine boots.

Note that when you have 20 services all being started at the same time, each will start up slower as it competes with the others for slices of the machine's precious resources (CPU/RAM/Disk/Network). That is, each service takes longer to become available!

If you have a few services that are critical, then you may want to set those few to Automatic and set as many of the others as you can to Automatic (Delayed Start). This will ensure that the critical services get the most resources early and become available sooner, while the non-critical services start a bit later (which by definition is ok).

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  • Most relevant comment in link above from Tom Wijsman... Indeed, after handling the Non-Delayed Start services it will queue a worker thread which has a default delay of 120 seconds, which can be overridden by the AutoStartDelay value in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control. When this worked thread runs the Delayed Start services are handled and when they are done the SCM signals the event \BaseNamedObjects\SC_AutoStartComplete... – Tom Wijsman May 20 '11 at 23:05 Aug 12, 2014 at 16:52
  • @barrypicker guess you don't have edit rights yet, I've added Tom's answer in my answer. Aug 13, 2014 at 10:12
  • Too bad the GUI doesn't allow you to specify the delay-duration. If service 5 cannot start properly unless service 4 is already fully started, it would be nice if the gui would allow you to set service 5 to start some duration after service 4 starts.
    – LonnieBest
    May 15, 2016 at 3:45
  • @LonnieBest - that's what serivice dependencies are for. Each service key in CurrentControlSet\Services has an optional DependOnService value (REG_MULTI_SZ) with a list of services that have to be running before this service can be started.
    – Luc VdV
    Nov 5, 2018 at 14:16

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