A method and apparatus to provide accurate and automated timing of firmware routines, such as initialization tasks at boot time, is provided. Since each task sends a progress indicator code to a display buffer when it starts to run, by saving processor time stamps at the time these codes change, it is possible to calculate and store the time duration for each routine. In the case of system initialization, these time durations can be an indication of problems if they are much longer than normal or an indication of excessive, inefficient, or ineffective processing that might be speed up in order to reduce the total boot time.