Solved Suddenly windows takes much longer to start

[dita]

So a couple weeks back my computer started spending quite a long time after the log-in screen (~1 min+), and then shows me a black screen with just my cursor before the desktop loads (~2 mins). The latter of these was what drew my attention to it actually, since the computer had not done this before.

As far as I know, no new installations/system changes took place around the time that this started happening. When I first noticed the issue, I tried a system restore to a few days prior, but that did not remove the issue either. Have done virus scans and spyware scans, and disabled a bunch of services and startup programs, but the issue still persists. Hard drive integrity also does not appear to be an issue.

I guess I could probably chop down on boot time by disabling pretty much everything from the startup list, but was wondering if there are any known reasons that would suddenly cause boot to take much longer, even with more startups before. As far as I can tell, system works just fine after starting up. Might not be as fast or something, but I honestly can't tell.

Thanks!

 

[Jacee]

Have you cleaned out all temporary files?

 

[dita]

Have you clean out all temporary files?

Yes, have run disk cleanup and defrag, latter of has always been scheduled anyway.

 

[hoganth]

If you are using a usb drive for readyboost, remove it and see what happens. I had a similar experience a few weeks ago when all of a sudden my system took forever to boot. After a couple of days going through the basics I discovered that my usb Readyboost drive went south. Don't know why that would affect boot times but it did on my system.
Just a thought

 

[gregrocker]

Why would you have a bunch of freeloaders starting up with Win7, instead of waiting until they are needed to start them (What a concept!)?

Is this the corrupt factory preinstall with all of the smothering bloatware and useless duplicate utilties? If so I would Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7. Until then I'd Clean Up Factory Bloatware

You can also work through these Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7 to check it over which may reveal what's causing the boot slowdown.

If none of these resolve the problem I'd try Gathering a Startup, Shutdown, Sleep, Hibernate, or Reboot Trace - Windows 7 Forums

 

[dita]

If you are using a usb drive for readyboost, remove it and see what happens. I had a similar experience a few weeks ago when all of a sudden my system took forever to boot. After a couple of days going through the basics I discovered that my usb Readyboost drive went south. Don't know why that would affect boot times but it did on my system.
Just a thought

Don't have this. Don't actually know what readyboost is, actually. The only USB devices I've got are my keyboard, mouse and webcam, and removing them have not made a difference.

Why would you have a bunch of freeloaders starting up with Win7, instead of waiting until they are needed to start them (What a concept!)?

Is this the corrupt factory preinstall with all of the smothering bloatware and useless duplicate utilties? If so I would Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7. Until then I'd Clean Up Factory Bloatware

You can also work through these Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7 to check it over which may reveal what's causing the boot slowdown.

If none of these resolve the problem I'd try Gathering a Startup, Shutdown, Sleep, Hibernate, or Reboot Trace - Windows 7 Forums

Don't think I've got that much stuff starting up on boot, actually. As far as I can tell it's a bunch of drivers and stuff? Main concern was actually why it suddenly slowed noticably when there was the same amount of stuff running before, and not so much the time taken but rather if it's a symptom of some underlying problem developing.

http://imgur.com/5dGx6xM

Anyways, will try to do the trace thing in the meantime. Thanks!

 

[gregrocker]

Uncheck all of those Startups and non-MS Services in msconfig as shown in the Clean Boot step in Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7.

I see you have Symantec bloatware installed. I would uninstall all of the bloatware and run lean and mean with Microsoft Security Essentials and the Win7 firewall. Clean Up Factory Bloatware

If you're willing to go to all the trouble of running a Boot Trace, why not instead take the same amount of time to get the vastly superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 and have a perfect install which will stay that way as long as you stick with the tools and methods given?

 

[dita]

Uncheck all of those Startups and non-MS Services in msconfig as shown in the Clean Boot step in Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7.

I see you have Symantec bloatware installed. I would uninstall all of the bloatware and run lean and mean with Microsoft Security Essentials and the Win7 firewall. Clean Up Factory Bloatware

If you're willing to go to all the trouble of running a Boot Trace, why not instead take the same amount of time to get the vastly superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 and have a perfect install which will stay that way as long as you stick with the tools and methods given?

Thanks for the suggestions. However, running a trace seems much simpler actually, since I already have the SDK it's just essentially rebooting twice. And I wouldn't have to deal with creating a boot disk and reinstalling all of my programs that I need to work. Only question though, is who should I give the .ETL file from the trace to, or are there guides available that help to break down the information within?

Running the trace instead of a fresh install will (hopefully) also be more useful in finding out why there was a sudden change in the boot times, and more importantly (to me) check if it is some precursor to hardware issues, as I would need to take appropriate measures to manage any expected failure/downtime. Having a very quick boot would be nice but not essential to me, and I might carry out the other actions in the future if this issue and any potential hardware concerns are addressed.

Can all non-MS startups really be safely removed though? To my untrained eye, the first 6 items appear to belong to the processor, sound and touchpad drivers respectively. I am quite confused as to why these might not need to be running from the start, and would appreciate being able to understand more before I clean up all the startups and services as per the guide. As for the symantec, that wasn't factory installed but actually added last year for my school's network. I'll probably check with them if I could use something else instead and proceed from there.

Thanks again for your help and links to the guides =)

 

[gregrocker]

Those startups don't belong to the hardware but to the crapware programs installed by the OEM to supposedly monitor them but which are only used to spy on you - if you don't use any specialized settings which you would know about (e.g. overclocking). There are much better versions built into Win7 for most all of these functions.

Any other item you can google it's name to see what it does, but most likely it isn't needed.

Nothing that's required to start with Win7 besides your AV is listed in msconfig>Startup and >Services after Hiding MS Services. The only listings that need to be enabled are a messenger or something which you must have running when the OS starts. All others are freeloaders most likely snuck in to spy on you, yielding profitable behavioral information.

There's never been a single complaint with countless thousands who have trimmed these startups. The tutorial for Startup Programs - Change has over two millions views and is the most viewed tech support tutorial on the web.

 

[dita]

Those startups don't belong to the hardware but to the crapware programs installed by the OEM to supposedly monitor them but which are only used to spy on you - if you don't use any specialized settings which you would know about (e.g. overclocking). There are much better versions built into Win7 for most all of these functions.

Any other item you can google it's name to see what it does, but most likely it isn't needed.

Nothing that's required to start with Win7 besides your AV is listed in msconfig>Startup and >Services after Hiding MS Services. The only listings that need to be enabled are a messenger or something which you must have running when the OS starts. All others are freeloaders most likely snuck in to spy on you, yielding profitable behavioral information.

There's never been a single complaint with countless thousands who have trimmed these startups. The tutorial for Startup Programs - Change has over two millions views and is the most viewed tech support tutorial on the web.

That's great to know. Will definitely try that out. Just to check though, should services that are already set to manual start in services.msc be disabled in msconfig too? Or do I only need to do one or the other

 

[dita]

So the trace has been done, and unfortunately the file is 1.3gb large, so not gonna really be able to upload that anywhere. I'll take some screenshots of some of the graphs though, and if anyone is able/willing to help or needs more data or other things to be traced (drivers?), do let me know and I'll be glad to provide more information that may help solve the problem.

From what I can tell, the winlogon phase seems to be taking too long (>100 secs). But depsite the number of services & processes running, there appears to be basically nothing going on for the last 50secs or so of this period, other than one instance of svchost spiking in the middle of it. Also, 90+% disk utilization doesn't sound very healthy...?

Anyway, the screenshots I took are below. Any assistance over this would be greatly welcome!
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22729417/Trace SS.zip

Thanks!

 

[gregrocker]

dita:


upload the file to a server like free Skydrive with each Windows Live/Hotmail ID. Then post a link in the Trace tutorial for the author's help. He will hopefully see it.

There were other options provided and your best choice is still to Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

g

 

[dita]

dita:


upload the file to a server like free Skydrive with each Windows Live/Hotmail ID. Then post a link in the Trace tutorial for the author's help. He will hopefully see it.

There were other options provided and your best choice is still to Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

g

Thanks! File is compressed and slowly uploading, and I'll post a comment in the thread later, and hopefully it can be identified if it's a hardware problem or just crap on the system. The concern wasn't not having somewhere to upload the file to, but rather having bad upload speeds from my current location.

In the meantime, I'll probably go about disabling them services and startups for efficiency's sake. Still want to avoid reinstalling as far as possible as I don't really feel I can currently afford the downtime that reinstalling windows and all programs would entail.

Repeating a question from earlier, though, in disabling services, the troubleshooting guide says to do it in msconfig. If services have been unchecked in msconfig do they need to be set to manual in services.msc as well? Conversely, if they are already set to a manual start, do they still need to be unchecked?

Thanks very much again greg =)

 

[Layback Bear]

When you are in msconfig/Services go to the lower left corner and put a check mark in the box (Hide All Microsoft Services). It will show 3rd party services at that point. The only thing I have checked is my security program. I highly recommend not messing with Microsoft Services.

 

[dita]

When you are in msconfig/Services go to the lower left corner and put a check mark in the box (Hide All Microsoft Services). It will show 3rd party services at that point. The only thing I have checked is my security program. I highly recommend not messing with Microsoft Services.

Yes, I did notice that mentioned in the tutorial guide. What I meant was if the non-MS services need to be disabled through services.msc as well or not, or if one or the other would be enough and they achieve the same effect.

Unrelatedly, cute sig!

 

[gregrocker]

Msconfig will handle everything needed, as per the tutorial. Stick with it.

I see you've posted in the tutorial thread but I've heard the author Carl may be literally swamped by Sandy besides his busy travel schedule with MS. If you don't hear from him I would post it also in the forums which originally hosted the Trace to ask for help there from his colleagues who are expert in this specialized field: Trace Windows 7 boot/shutdown/hibernate/standby/resume issues - MSFN Forum

 

[Layback Bear]

You don't have to do anything but remove the check mark while you are in msconfig/Startup and or msconfig/Services and do a reboot. Remember this does not stop these things it just stops them for running at boot until you or Windows tells them to work.
--------------
Example:
At times you use Alpha program but you have it unchecked in Startup and Services. You will still be able to use it when you want to just by tick on the program Alpha (or its icon) or you tick on check for updates for Alpha. When you are done with program Alpha you just close it and it stops and does not run in the background when not needed. This is the method many of us use to control what runs when and what is updated when. The program you unchecked isn't moved or removed and you can always check it again if you decide to.
--------------
Thank you; the sig was made by ARC.

 

[dita]

So this evening I had the time to uninstall symantec, and remove the startup programs/services/etc. However, this only presented minor reductions in boot time, and was still slower than it used to be, even when there were ~10 more startups running.

Was going to post the above, then noticed this thread with similar symptoms. Thought I'd try out his observation and disable the network adaptors and reboot. And suddenly startup times are back being wonderful again, ~5+ secs between login and the full desktop. No clue why establishing a connection would be a big issue (maybe behind the whole problem?), but I guess I'll monitor the other thread and poke around to see if some drivers or something need updating.

Will also monitor the boot trace thread and move it to the other forums if necessary. Thanks for the suggestion, greg.

 

[gregrocker]

You've never answered if this is preinstalled factory OEM Win7 with all the bloatware.

In the time this has taken you could already have the perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
to enjoy Win7's performance which you'll never have the the corrupt factory preinstall.

 

[dita]

You've never answered if this is preinstalled factory OEM Win7 with all the bloatware.

In the time this has taken you could already have the perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7
to enjoy Win7's performance which you'll never have the the corrupt factory preinstall.

Yes this is the original installed version of windows, though most of the preinstalled apps have been removed long ago. Sorry that I've not taken your recommendation to reinstall windows, but I've just not felt that I've had the several hours it'd need to create the boot disc and reinstall all my programs, since programs and OS are on the same partition. It might be something I'll try in the future when I've more time, but was not absolutely necessary in this case as the performance before have been sufficient for my purposes.

Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and mark this as solved. Think I've found the problem to be a hard drive on the network that was moved to another server but was still mapped, causing windows to query the drive repeatedly till timeout, before loading the desktop. After unmapping it I'm back to ~40 seconds from the power button and ~5 seconds from login, which is good enough for me. Will continue to monitor, but hopefully this was what brought about the problems to begin with.

In the meantime, some programs had trouble running after disabling all the non-MS services in msconfig, so I went into services.msc and changed some of them from disabled (due to msconfig) to manual. I would imagine that this shouldn't cause slowdowns since it's still disabled at startup, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Once again, big thanks to everyone who helped out in this thread! =)

P.S. Did not realise that there were actual MS staff helping out here, like cluberti you mentioned. Is this actually an official support forum or just a community one?