SSD Bootup Slowed Way Down Right After "Fixing" Home Network

At my home, I had my new Windows 7 Professional PC (with SSD) and Laptop networked by someone a year ago who at the time said he was setting up a WorkGroup instead of a HomeGroup. Over time, that stopped working for some reason.

Then another guy came out and re-did the network. Said he preferred HomeGroup and made changes, but my network sharing still shows Workgroup. I have no idea how this is actually configured at this point due to my limited experience with networks. Trying to get this aspect fixed in my networking sub-forum thread.

After the revised network setup, my desktop SSD takes much longer to fully boot up than the original configuration. I don't know how to diagnose this. I've looked at the Event Viewer and good lord there are lots of errors and warnings, most of which I don't have a clue about.

I measured the boot up time as follows:
00:00 Press start button
00:07 Asus logo on black screen
00:18 Windows boot manager screen with options for Windows; Macrium Recovery; and AX64 Recovery
00:21 Windows logo on black background
00:44 I hear the initiation whirring of my external hard drive
00:47 Light blue Windows Welcome screen
01:17 Purple desktop background, with no icons
01:35 Icons show up
01:45 Popup for which drives were recognized, and I'm ready to go

Prior to the networking change, it took half the time.

Can someone assist me in figuring out what's in the way how to get that sweet speed back?

Thanks,
Chamlin

Golden said:

Perform a clean startup and lets see if the speed is better.

Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup

Cool. Will do this in 15 minutes. :)

Ran the test.

Compared the boot up time as follows ("normal slow" in black, Startups and services off - this color):
00:00 00:00 Press start button
00:07 00:05 Asus logo on black screen
00:18 00:10 Windows boot manager screen with options for Windows; Macrium Recovery; and AX64 Recovery
00:21 00:13 Windows logo on black background
00:44 00:29 I hear the initiation whirring of my external hard drive
00:47 00:37 Light blue Windows Welcome screen
01:17 01:07 Purple desktop background, with no icons
01:35 01:25 Icons show up
01:45 01:31 Popup for which drives were recognized, and I'm ready to go

The 14 seconds isn't the difference maker. But this is helpful to know. What next?

Golden said:

Check to see whether the SSD internal alignment is correct:
SSD Alignment

SSD Partition Alignment Verified.

Golden said:

What version of firmware is installed?
Intel® High Performance Solid-State Drives — How to Find the SSD Firmware Version

Yup, firmware 400i, up to date.

whs said:

Have a look into your event viewer. Drill down this chain:

Eventvwr
Applications and Service Logs
Microsoft
Windows
Diagnostics - performance
Operational
Event ID 100, 101, 103, 107

Make the evennt windows big enough so that you see things. Then look at the general tab and the detail tab. Examples:

whs, thanks for pitching in! Looked at it and tried to export the results but the txt and csv are really hard to read. Is there a better way? I'll show a screen shot or two.

• Only found 100's and 101's.
• I've had this computer for 500 days.
• There were 33 incidents of 101's, mostly CrashPlan (my online backup service) and Emsisoft Internet Security.
• There were 441 listings of 100's.
  
  • 110 were "Critical" level;
  • 93 were "Error" level;
  • 238 were "Warning" level.
• Boot times ranged from:
  
  • 15,000 to 24,000 ms (early in the system's life)
  • 30,000 to 40,000 ms (after I had the first iteration of the network/workgroup set up)
  • 60,000 to 100,000 + ms (beginning in February 2014), but it just happens in spurts, with some periods dropping back to the 30,000 ms levels.
• I cross-referenced the following in search of a cause:
  
  • Software installation dates;
  • Windows update dates;
    
    • but did not find anything that jumped out at me.

Is there something in particular that I should be looking for that I might have missed?