Super fast boot has become painfully slow

carwiz said:

169.254.205.176 shows up as a private network near Los Angeles, California. That's not a good sign. You may have software "phoning home" or you're running a Torrent in which case, you're on your own. I would be sure to run a good AV scan.

After looking at what's running, your problem may be tied to the Symantec AV running along side MSE. For test purposes, uninstall the Symantec software and turn-on Windows Firewall.

Norton/Symantec - Uninstall Completely

Open CCleaner and turn-off the monitor options. This can cause a startup delay and be a processor hog. Just check for an update manually about once a month.

That's all I had time to check for now.

That's the one that worries me, but neither Symantec nor Malwarebytes picked anything up in Safe Mode...

-Edit-

Was just some Marvell thing, un-installed it and the message is gone now. Only message left in Event Viewer > Custom Views > Administrative Events is Event 4001, WLAN-AutoConfig

Can anyone tell me if I'm barking up the wrong tree? In the below the difference between the highlighted process and the one above it is, I would say, when and how long the black screen lag during boot happens; does this mean it is the cause?

Many of the AV products cannot be run concurrently. They interfere with each other and can cause problems. Some will even BSOD the system. Choose ONE but I would suggest dumping Symantec. It's a resource hog with 8-10 drivers with a huge overhead.

I was looking at a number Kernel Power events in the system log you supplied but it (the log) ended 2/24/2015 so nothing was current. Kernel Power events indicate one or more of the processors is resetting. Either because of power failures or component failure. I didn't see any "Throttling" which indicates overheating so they are all power events. Will your battery accept a full charge? Check with the laptop OEM and see if there's a more recent BIOS update. Yours it currently: BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. F14, 22/08/2012


Also check this:
Click the Orb and type msconfig. Click on msconfig.exe. Click on the Boot tab then Advanced Options... Post an image of that window if any of the boxes are checked. (None should be)

While you're there, click on the Startup tab and post images all the entries.

Sorry, don't know why I was thinking laptop. Too many threads going at once.

Lets see if it's a BIOS boot delay or a Windows boot delay.

Open the Event Viewer.
Navigate to: Application and Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Diagnostics-Performance > Operational

Click on the last (latest) Event 100 in the upper pane.
In the lower pane, click on the Details tab and select Friendly (view).
Right click anywhere in the lower pane and click on Select All.
Right click again in the lower pane and click on Copy.
Paste the details into your next message.

I suspect you may have some malware running as a service or there's a service taking an unusually long time to initialize. In the image below, the green arrow indicates the Session 0 & 1 start up time that includes normal drivers, services and paging. The red arrow is Services Initialization time and is way out of line. Normally this is a few seconds at most but usually less than one second. Yours is over 40 seconds and consuming most of the boot time.

Go back to the same area of the Event Log and look for any other events in the 100 series such as 101, 103 etc. If there are any, copy and post those. Ignore the 200s, these are Shut-Down entries.

In the mean time, I'll go back through your zipped files and see if something stands out. You do have a few programs that are considered PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs) by most AV companies. One, or more, of these may have installed a service and is performing data gathering or unusual functions. One such program is Dropbox but you have it checked in your Start Up group so I assume you know what it does.

Not necessarily. These have been marked as "Critical Services" and you probably "Ok"ed the install from some other download. That is, if it is malware. There could just be a problem with a piece of hardware or corrupt file. I'll be back around lunch time (my time) to finish looking.

Is your PC behind a server or used as a home server, file server? There's a couple of services I don't normally see running on a home PC. One is TrkWks. It could be used by Dropbox, Norton, Sage or QuickBooks (or any number of backdoor programs). I need to see if it's still running after you removed Norton. Please run a new SF Diagnostics as before and upload a new zip file.

The Distributed Link Tracking Client (TrkWks) is responsible for tracking links to files saved on a file server. For example; if you save a file on a file server and put a link to it on your desktop and the file is moved on the file server. The link on your desktop will change accordingly to the new location of the file on the file server.