Windows 7 - Very slow log in (5+ minutes)

Hello everyone, yesterday my computer rebooted while I was watching a video, I believe some updates were installed and that's the reason it did it. After booting up, it hanged at the welcome screen with the blue circle and the "Welcome" message for about 5 minutes before actually showing my desktop, and it has being doing that ever since. Once it boots, everything works fine, but it's taking a long time to do so.

I couldn't do a system restore because for some reason there weren't any restore points (none at all). Safe Mode worked just fine and Diagnostics Startup helped but it still took a while to load.

Event Viewer shows messages with IDs 6005 & 6006:

-"The winlogon notification subscriber <Profiles> is taking long time to handle the notification event (Logon)"
-"The winlogon notification subscriber <Profiles> took 164 seconds to handle the notification event (Logon)"

I haven't really changed anything or installed anything besides Office 2010.

Thanks.

Please fill in your Specs, lower left had corner of you post. This will let us all no what we are working with. I don't believe Windows will shut down without prompting you first after a update. I would recommend msconfig and see what is checked in start up. Not knowing your specs it acts like something is trying to load at start up that Windows is having a problem with. It might be having it with you newly installed Office 2010. Make sure it is unchecked in msconfig/start up.
Let us know what happens and what you find.

Well msconfig shows the usual startup programs but I already tried disabling all of them and restarting and it didn't help, so I don't think it has anything to do with that. The weird thing is that it's also taking a lot of time to power off.

I searched on google about those messages in Event Viewer and I found a lot of threads about the problem but it was about computers on a network with domains and stuff... But I am in no network or anything.

Oh and by the way, I was watching the video in full-screen so I think that's why I didn't see the message about the system reboot after the update, it reboots itself if you don't press anything after a while, doesn't it?

It's complaining about loading your profile taking to long, so it isn't surprising that disabling startup items didn't help. Is the disk defragmented (multiple passes), and if you create a new user, does the problem (and the event log errors) also occur when that user logs on?

I just re-installed Windows a couple of weeks ago so I don't think my disk's fragmented and well, just two days ago it wasn't taking longer than 5 seconds to go from welcome screen to desktop.

I activated the guest account and it also hangs, but it's just the very first time I log in into an account after booting up (whether it's my account or guest), after that I can log on and off to any account with no delay whatsoever as long as I don't power off the laptop.

Startup Repair


Try the above. Also click the tutorials at the top of this page for other troubleshooting methods.

And, check you Windows updates to insure that all have successfully downloaded.

I had forgotten about startup repair, I just tried it but it said it couldn't find any problems. Also, I just realized that if I boot up my laptop and then shut it down again without logging in, it still takes a considerable amount of time to power off.

Since you do not have restore points, personally, I would back-up and do a clean install.

But, I am not known for my patience.

I already thought of that , I'm trying to avoid it though, it's a real hassle to install everything again and I have a LOT of documents... maybe I'll just partition my hard drive to make things easier in the future.

Try this and see what might be causing the problem.
Gathering a Startup, Shutdown, Sleep, Hibernate, or Reboot Trace