How to adjust the Automatic (Delayed Start) services delay time at system boot
To speed up the Windows boot process, Microsoft introduced Automatic (Delayed Start) Windows Services. The idea behind this was to delay the start of non-essential services to minimise the overall boot time of the operating system. You can find a reasonable (but older) discussion of this and other changes Microsoft made to optimise the boot process.
When you create a FireDaemon Pro service, the default Startup Mode is now Automatic (Delayed Start). This change was made intentionally given that FireDaemon Pro services are not critical to the successful boot of the operating system and ideally they should start later in the boot cycle. You can, of course, change the Startup Mode to Automatic when you configure your FireDaemon Pro service if you want to. You can also edit the default Service Definition template and make the Startup Mode Automatic for all new services that you create.
One of the side effects of Automatic (Delayed Start) services is that they do start later in the boot cycle. The default delay is 120 seconds (2 minutes). On fast hardware, this might just be too long to wait. To change the delay applied to Automatic (Delayed Start) services, open the FireDaemon Pro GUI, click on the Hamburger Menu, choose Options, then Service Control and adjust the delay.
You can also achieve the same by creating the following registry key via the Windows Registry Editor.
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\AutoStartDelay
It is of type REG_DWORD. Set the value of the key to the desired delay in milliseconds (e.g. 60000 for one minute). You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Remember this change affects all Automatic (Delayed Start) services. This includes FireDaemon Pro and all other Windows services.
If you want to granularly delay the FireDaemon Pro service startup, in the Scheduling Tab you can apply an Overall Launch Delay to the service when it starts. This means specific FireDaemon Pro services can be delayed further during operating system boot (i.e. 120 seconds + Over Launch Delay seconds). Alternatively, you can change the FireDaemon Pro Startup Type to Automatic and then set the Overall Launch Delay meaning your application will start much earlier in the operating system boot cycle yet not immediately at boot (i.e. 0 seconds + Overall Launch Delay seconds).
