Really Slow shutdown and startup

whs · 31 Dec 2014

Disk management shows no problem. Is that a HDD or a SSD. And as Cuberti said, the traces would be useful.

ericgeil · 31 Dec 2014

I shared them again, though it showed them as stil shared, so I'm not sure what's up. Let me know if you can't reach them still (domain is still m e d i a f i r e d o t c o m):

http://www.**************/download/4...REGISTRY_1.zip
http://www.**************/download/a..._IO_INIT_1.zip
http://www.**************/download/q...REGISTRY_1.zip

**cluberti** · 31 Dec 2014

Shutdown trace:
The pantech modem service is delaying the service portion of shutdown far more than any other service, but that's only 3 seconds (shutdown appears to only take 13 seconds, which isn't horrible). However, I notice the system is running MediaFire desktop (and the service is a "permanent" one), including the NTFS monitor. Unless this is absolutely needed, I wouldn't be running that anywhere near a system I wanted to perform well. Otherwise, there's nothing here in the shutdown trace that stands out at all other than those things.

Faster (~31 seconds) boot trace:
The boot traces appear to take about 30 seconds. The preboot/winlogon portion (~the first 15 seconds) shows the majority of that time spent on antivirus process activity (Charter Security Suite, Norton PC Checkup, a few misc tools). Get that nonsense off the box pronto.

The post winlogon/shell times (logon, explorer starts and finishes loading) are also ~15 seconds, and the majority of that time is spent doing things like starting IOBit driver booster, the Intel Management Engine components (do you really need those?), but the MediaFire app is hitting the CPU far harder than anything else (exacerbated by the poor security suite software as well). Also, SearchIndexer.exe is hitting the disk during logon, which could indicate a large amount of content in the user's documents/music/etc. folders, or the need for a cache purge and re-index.

I can't necessarily explain why things got worse, but I can tell you what I'd do if it was my machine - I'd remove any and all Charter apps (including Norton) and replace them with something lightweight (or just leave the Windows firewall and Defender running), MediaFire, and potentially the Intel ME software as well, to start.

Slow (~90 second) boot trace:
It appears that all of the time is spent in ReadyBootIO - However, the hit/miss ratio is very good, and there's a noticeable (~66 second) gap here. In looking at the rest of the data, the delay is pretty noticeable after the Synaptic touchpad driver service starts, and the Intel Management Engine processes (UMS and LMS exes) start. There's little activity otherwise while those 3 take their sweet time getting going.

ericgeil · 31 Dec 2014

Also, it's an SSD. One of the DVDs is a mounted ISO, FYI.

whs · 31 Dec 2014

One other thing you might want to do is to check the SSD alignment.

SSD Alignment

ericgeil · 31 Dec 2014

Wow, great info. Thanks! I will do some digging on those items and see if I can make a dent in the times. A couple of things:

Charter's security suite is F-secure, not Norton. Interestingly, I don't have anything from Norton installed at all, so that's something...

Meanwhile, any suggestions for a replacement for the charter AV? I'm basically using it because it's free, but have no particular loyalty there. I've used MS security essentials before with no issues. Should I try that? Something else you recommend? On a side note, and just FYI, I've had Charter's AV since day 1 on this machine and never had the slow shutdown / boot issues.

Also, I only installed the media fire for the purposes of posting the files to this thread, so while it may be "a" problem, it wouldn't be "the" problem. Either way, uninstalling now

.

Thanks again, and happy new year

! I'll post back here as soon as I do some digging.

whs · 31 Dec 2014

Why don't you use MSE. It is free too. But before you do, use the F-secure uninstaller. This is a must.

Microsoft Security Essentials - Microsoft Windows

ericgeil · 31 Dec 2014

I checked the alignment on the SSD...It shows offset of 1024 KB, which is apparently ok.

I also uninstalled media fire, disabled Charter (didn't uninstall yet, pending finding a replacement), and disabled anything synaptic and intel. So far no change, it's running about 70 sec shut down and 70 sec start up.

The 66 second gap you mentioned lines up nicely with what I'm seeing at startup. The windows logo appears, then the screen goes totally off (not just "projecting" black, but OFF off... I can see what looks like liquid draining from the screen if there's a glare on it), and it stays like that for just over a minute, then the login screen comes up pretty quickly after that, and the machine is greased lightning again. Any thoughts on what is causing that state? It's like the computer just goes to sleep for a solid minute, mid-startup...

whs · 31 Dec 2014

Here is a test program you could try. https://www.soluto.com/boot-time

ericgeil · 31 Dec 2014

I uninstalled f-secure, and thought I had encouraging news, but then it sort of reverted back:

45 second shut down
15 second boot
3 second shutdown (yes, really - this is how quick it used to be at one point)
then back to roughly 80 second boots and 45 second shutdowns

(boot = zero-to-login-prompt)
(shutdown starts when the "shutting down" message appears)

The black screen is pretty much that same 66-ish seconds every time. It just didn't do it the one time for some reason. It does not do this on a restart, only on a cold boot.

Good thing it's new years, as I am in need of a cocktail