Logon prompt taking nearly 10 minutes to appear

My PC is running Win 7 Pro 64-bit

Today it's developed a problem where, on power on or after a reset, the logon prompt takes nearly 10 minutes to appear - so the usual blue display and cursor appears as normal but there's no way to log on as there's no logon prompt.

Once the logon prompt shows up I can logon okay, etc.

Booting into Safe Mode is fine, the logon prompt appears very quickly.


I initially suspected it was my USB card reader causing the proplem as I was seeing a USB device error after logging on but unplugging that reader from the onboard USB connector didn't help, although that now doesn't work either (I get an "unknown device" error) so that may need to be replaced (re-installing the drivers doesn't help, but in fairness it's been a bit erratic for some time now).

Have tried unplugging my other USB devices to no avail (except for the keyboard and mouse, but as those work just fine I can't image that they are at fault).

What is the best way to find out the cause of the long pause before the logon prompt appears?

I should also say that when I'm waiting for the logon prompt to appear there's no disk activity, then just before the logon prompt appears there is a sudden burst of disk activity. This says to me that some driver is eventually failing/timing out and then allowing the remaining drivers, etc to load.

mmmmm i had problems with something like that with windows xp a few years back when i did xp reinstall a certain hardware plugged in was causing errors like that to me so if you reinstalled your windows os make sure devices are plugged out when you do it or you will get problems

If it boots normally on safe mode, is a program that loads at start up.
Did you install or updated a program recently? Open Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features and have a look at the last installed program.
Use msconfig to disable all programs and services.
Then enable fist half. Once you find the half that has the problem, enable half of the half till you find the problem.

Thanks for the suggestions, will give them a go and report back.

And here's the solution - I use Acronis True Image to clone my hard drive for backup purposes, I recently upograded to the latest version. This version includes Acronis Active Protection which monitors the hard drive and so prevents ransomeware from infecting the system.

Acronis stated that:

"Acronis Active Protection service depends on Windows Cryptographic Services. When new processes are created Acronis Active Protection verifies its digital signature with WinVerifyTrust API that relies on CryptSvc providers. When CryptSvc service is not yet available at the time of signature verify process, WinVerifyTrust does a blocking wait until the cryptographic service is up and running."

They then gave me instructions on a Registry value to edit which alleviates the logon problem but still keeps the active protection working.

In my opinion, all "bonus" programs have some side effect and they won't 100% protect your computer.
I have a good Firewall (old ZoneAlarm), a antivirus (Avira free) and a manually run antispyware (SUPERAntiSpyware).
But the most important: I have a boot able HDD for backups that remains disconnected. Once a week, I connect it and boot from it and do a Data backup. I also have some images from the main SSD.
If something happens to my Win 7 drive (SSD) or to the Data drive (HDD), I can work from the backup drive and restore the system in minutes.