Slow (10 min) start-up BEFORE login screen

Callender · 24 Apr 2017

That's not the correct report (the one you posted) - Sid you create the second custom view "Boot Degradation" because that's what you need to look at.

You'd be looking for anything with Event ID's 101. 102, 103, 106 and 109 with 102 and 103 as gthe place to start.

You are looking for any entry with a high number of milliseconds (higher than any other similar entry)

Here's a screenshot of where to look.

Slow (10 min) start-up BEFORE login screen-computer-management.jpg

Particularly check any service or driver that is to do with security software as it's often the culprit but of couse it could be something else.

RProsser · 24 Apr 2017

tetraps: I restarted the machine and went to Safe Mode. It loaded fast, no problem.

Now get this: I restarted the machine to see how long it would take this time to get to the login window. It took only 48 SECONDS!

What the heck? I restarted twice. Same time. A head scratcher for sure!

Callender · 24 Apr 2017

Keep an eye on it. A safe mode boot is said to fix problems sometimes. Also on my machine (laptop) I sometimes do a power drain by holding the power button for 15 seconds or so.

Safe Mode boot only loads essential drivers and services so if it happens again check boot degradation for drivers and services particularly those for security software.

RProsser · 24 Apr 2017

Callender: Oops. Thanks for the note. So, I went back to the Boot Degradation, and noticed that there are no warnings for the last twenty days. The last "103" was something about plug-and-play service.

Callender · 24 Apr 2017

Okay if that's the only thing showing up then you'll need to investigate. I don't know much about plug and play service so if anyone else has ideas on diagnosis or possible fix please post.

On my machine for comparison:

Slow (10 min) start-up BEFORE login screen-plugplay.jpg

Slow (10 min) start-up BEFORE login screen-plugplay-2.jpg

I'm thinking that if it was my own machine with a system image backup available I'd have a go at replacing "C:\Windows\System32\umpnpmgr.dll" but that would be a shot in the dark.

Callender · 24 Apr 2017

EDIT: Forget that. No warnings for twenty days means that it can't be the problem!

RProsser · 24 Apr 2017

Got it. Thanks : )

johnhoh · 24 Apr 2017

best way to deal with boot delay imo is to run microsoft's process monitor, selecting options > enable boot logging, then reboot, then restart process monitor. It will show you a play by play down to the second of everything that happens during the boot up, so you just look for a big time gap in the log and you know what is causing the delay.

Process Monitor

RProsser · 24 Apr 2017

johnhoh: thanks very much for the input. I took your advice, installed the program, and restarted.

Groan ... I clicked "resolved" earlier today far too soon. As noted in a few posts back, I thought all was well after a Safe Mode restart, and then a normal restart which took only 48 seconds to the login insted of the 10 minutes it took last week when I posted this thread.

CRAP! The restart after installing MS Process Monitor took over 18 minutes to get to the login screen!

What the heck is going on here? I now have 5 big Bootlog Process Monitor PML files — 1.87GB worth (see attached screen shot). There is so much info in there I can't make sense of it while going through it.
———————
colander: FYI, at this point, I also checked Event Viewer and there are no changes to the data I posted earlier, which seems odd, i.e., no new entries.
———————
Next, I restarted into Safe Mode again. As before it took ~45 seconds to login. I then restarted into normal mode: it took about 50 seconds to login screen (as opposed to 18+ min as noted above) and this time there are only two Boot Log PML files @ "only" 525MB instead of 1.87GB.

And then, out of curiosity, I did another restart to see if it would still behave. It did not. It's taken over 10 minutes to get to login screen.

So, the question begs, why would I need to go to safe mode first to get the subsequent restart to be under 1 minute?

Boy this computer is has issues. Not sure what to make of all this but thanks for listening!

johnhoh · 24 Apr 2017

RProsser said:

CRAP! The restart after installing MS Process Monitor took over 18 minutes to get to the login screen! What the heck is going on here? I now have 5 big Bootlog Process Monitor PML files — 1.87GB worth (see attached screen shot). There is so much info in there I can't make sense of it while going through it.

When you ran process monitor and checked enable boot logging, did you also check the box that says "generate thread profiling events?" If so, try again with the box unchecked. But if you already had it unchecked the first time, procmon must have created several log files because they were so large. No biggie. You open those files within procmon by clicking on them one at a time.

But since they are so large, you will need to filter out all but the time consuming line items. To do that, once you have a log file opened, first right click on the column area so its says "select columns" and then add in a new column called "duration". This just adds a column which says how long each task took, and you'll see that most took only a few microseconds. (.000001)

After you've added the duration column, now you want to eliminate all but the lines with highest duration, so on the main procmon menu bar select "filter", then "add filter", then "duration more than 1 second", then hit apply. Below is a screenshot of what that should look like. After hitting apply, you will then be looking at ONLY those start up processes that took more than 1 second. On my system that is only three lines and the slowest one is three seconds. On your system, we're looking for something that took up to 600 seconds. Once you find that line, you may need help interpreting what it means, so post a screenshot once you find it. Unfortunately, you may need to do this for every log file in order to find the primary culprit.