Super slow boot

[Ron Theaker]

I had this in W7P some time ago and one of 2 things sorted out the issue.

First my SSD was near full and I hadnt noticed. Boot was taking forever (5mins) becuase it was manipulating the small rewrites to the HD during boot.

Second, and I am sure you have looked at this already, but delete all the unneeded temp files as these were what plugged up the SSD and Windows for some reason does not manage these well if at all.

 

[Raymond VanDervort]

Well, I have tried everything I can possibly dream up. Just giving up in frustration. It seems to be getting worse. I cannot get a handle or a clue to lead me in the right direction. No software or hardware is giving me any reason to lean in one direction or the other. Very frustrating.
Reinstalled windows, made sure motherboard, memory, drives etc. are not the problem yet it persists. Maddening! Talked with EVGA tech support, they gave me several ideas to try, which I tried them all, no dice!! I have been in the computer business for 30 years (consulting, networks, commercial and industrial programming). NOTHING has ever beaten me like this one. I was thinking of going to Win 11 or doing major hardware upgrade/replacement but nothing gives me a clue on where the problem lies and what direction to lean towards, Software or Hardware. Maddening.

I suggest what I have seen since Win 11 type of updates have been around and the same type of updates on my win 10 PC's - a download and partial install or a restart inspires a update and the restart is the trigger to go thru what is necessary to complete the process. The update is one that is not being forced but will take advantage of a restart. This avoids a restart requirement for an impending update that is an irritation to the value of the product perception. With all that said. Try this: do an update, and once no further updates are listed, restart, check again for an update, and if none, restart and see how it then restarts. I had a win 10 pc that was not doing updates until checked. When I side stepped user and did all updates, it took 5 hours, about 7 restarts until I was finally caught up.

 

[skyborough]

I had this and total really SLOW System Performance.

Programs often went into "Not Responding" mode lots of times.

I called Best Buy Geek Squad (this is NOT an AD for them.)

It took their clean up program 1.5 hours to remove nearly 2 GB (giga bytes) from my system. All were not the usual "clean registry" files you know about but 2GB of accumulated junk. All had long system file names. When done, my internet speed jumped to 330 bytes/sec and normal system slowness disappeared and boot took normal times.
It seems that Win 10/11 accumulates system junk and when it reaches 2GB it just cannot handle it.

All is well now.

Geek Squad charged $39.00 to do this. They loaded access to my PC software and the clean up program and nearly 2 hours later all was well. I am not doing an AD for them, just that they did know what to do and did it.

Again I am sharing a solution NOT an AD for Geek Squad.

 

[Pakeha]

This problem could well be solved using the information from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/t...rformance/windows-boot-issues-troubleshooting

 

[jhoffman]

First of all I want to thank ALL of you for your valuable input, experience and ideas.

PATTYANDME:
I never use the power button to shut down. I always use the Windows shut down procedure. There have been times in the past where a computer has gotten so screwed up i "had" to use the power button to shut down but those have rare.

KENHEART:
Done that several times in attempts to isolate the problem to hardware or software. I have gone so far as to remove all other drives, reformat them etc. No luck. I have run many, many diagnostic programs on Drive C with no problems reported as well as in depth memory tests which all came back ok. That is what has been the hardest about this problem, trying to at least determine if the problem is hardware or software which of course at least gives you a direction to work in. But, nothing has given me that direction.

LETMEBREAKIT:
I am very inclined to agree with you as the way to proceed (Shotgun! the darn thing, my words of course). Expensive of course, need new faster memory, CPU etc. to at least get up to date with the latest technology. On the other hand I really don't care what it costs if it solves the problem. I am gonna think about this for another day or two and will probably pursue hardware as the source of the problem. Gotta pickup on the best motherboard, memory, CPU to buy. Don't really give a D___ what it costs as long as I can fix it and move on. I live in a 55+ Community and support a lot of residents who have computers but don't know the first thing about them (i.e. Windows, Hardware etc.) so they depend on me for help a significant amount of the time.

PHLIM: Tried that more times than I can count. And yes, the BIOS is up-to-date, downloaded it and applied it several times.

Again, thanks so much to all of you for your input and help.

John

I don't know if this will fix the problem, but I am a big believer in trying simple things before moving on to more complex/expensive things.

Why don't you upgrade to Win 11 and see if that fixes the problem? (Assuming, of course, your computer is specced to run Win 11.)

I've used Win 11 since it came out, both on a computer I upgraded from Win 10 and on one that came with Win 11. It is very similar to Win 10 and seems to be pretty reliable.

I did have one baffling problem for a while--Fonts with Postscript outlines wouldn't work properly, though fonts with Truetype outlines worked fine. I troubleshooter, consulted Adobe, Microsoft and other experts without success, and one day they started working again after I updated to a newer version of Win 11. The point of this little story is that there is a reasonable chance that switching to Win 11 will fix your problem even if you never find out the exact cause of the problem.

 

[Macs R We]

Let's try something simple: Leave your computer off overnight. In the morning, boot it. Instead of logging in, immediately reboot it. If it doesn't lag during the reboot, you're probably looking at a heat problem, and I'd start with your drive. If your computer is a laptop, you can enhance this test by leaving it in the fridge overnight.

 

[Terry01]

I had a problem like this once with a significant government department (~12,000 staff and the auto reboot tests that were set up showed sometimes it was taking up to 45min to log on in some locations). Problem turned out to be in the Storage array infrastructure (and the storage array provider said it would not work and turned out they had done several reports but everyone ignored). Someone had put the password system in the overused access point within the storage array and therefore the password login simply got pushed into a general queue with all other traffic and the comms between the storage array and the pc's got confused. The solution was to install a dedicated log on / network access server.

You said it was during the day at work (not at night) so while not sure how your system is set up it could be a connection limitation issue for some authority during the boot up phase (and not actually with Windows). You mentioned it is when logging in or could be another part of start up? I cannot do it but a script was written to see the analysis of each step of the boot up process including logging in and if mandatory to do a check with an external server / external cloud storage (e.g. As experienced I am sure not this but for example if the boot up required to check the Antivirus definitions and you were using the manufacturers, such as Norton vs. and in-house dedicated Norton server that does that function) then those often have bottlenecks. In our case it was the password login that was the issue.

 

[Dave King]

Have you tried seeing if you power supply is running at its limit and causing the problem by over heating ? It may be that it starts off cool and as it runs it gets hot enough to cause problems. In your first post you said

"If I come in my office in the morning, power the computer up, the BIOS whips by in 4-6 seconds and Windows 10 Pro starts booting. Great!

However, if I reboot the computer (power off/on or warm boot) at any time during the day the BIOS (and the little whirling circle) are on the screen for 4-7 minutes at least before Windows starts booting!"

This is what makes me think it due to an over heating problem but it is not bad enough to cause it to stop working. Another thing is worth checking is the cooling system it ie. the fans, vents etc.
ALL the best Dave

 

[Maximusnights]

To be fair it always takes a little longer for a reboot or a soft restart but it shouldn't take five to seven minutes. I have been working on computers and repairing hardware and software since the mid-90s. If there has been one thing I have learned about windows in particular, they are notorious for updates that will slow a computer down in one way, shape, or form and take forever to rectify the problem.

Now I am not saying anything bad about the Windows tech team however true it is. It's partially the consumer's problem too. The majority of consumers that do everything that you have done are too afraid to come to the conclusion that they need to update their hardware or computer and that they would rather deal with the problem for quite some time without reporting it right away. As a result, the Windows tech forums that are often screened get a report here and there and aren't really drawn to the problem as a priority. If the majority of consumers report problems when they happen or near to when it happens then maybe the priority would be placed higher and get fixed more efficiently.

I can't control the majority of consumers all I can do is put the information out and hopefully inform a few people of how to speed up the process.

There is always one other possibility. Computer hardware does slow down over time. A piece of hardware has certain parameters to determine if it gets flagged as good or bad. Hardware can slow down considerably before Windows will detect it as faulty. If you bought the computer and all the hardware brand new then I would rule this out. If you custom-made your setup or recycle any of the hardware then I would try replacing the older hardware first. RAM can cause all sorts of problems anything from a flickering screen to a blue screen of death and everything in between. Whenever I troubleshoot a computer for hardware issues I always start with the RAM as it's often the most problematic and arguably the easiest to replace.