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

Carl! Hello! Hope things are going well. I'll remember to PM if we need you. I've always intended to try and learn to decipher boot traces, but I'm being a slack arse...maybe that can be a New Year's resolution....

Indeed - pick up the book if you haven't already. I'd like to help Mitch Tulloch with his books as well which tend to have relevant parts in this area, but my current role doesn't really give me that flexibility anymore - I was able to help Clint in some of my free time, but I don't get much of that right now so I have to be picky where I spend it.

And yes, using WPA to analyze trace files is indeed easier than it used to be with the old XPerf.

No worries. Chamlin, not sure if this is related but point the fella's to the BSOD issue you were having with EmiSoft - fixed by applying missing hotfix....I still think EmiSoft is 'dragging' on your system

I've always said that any software that is either designed to "protect" you from something, or "speed up" your PC, is likely to do neither. Protection packages are usually even worse, because the very design of scanning everything will have an immediate impact. I'm not saying that Emisoft isn't a viable security option (as I've never heard of them), but teams of hundreds of people writing such software can have issues at times (I'm looking at you, Trend) - a team of 25 is at least more likely to create software that doesn't perform as well in sacrifice to being thorough.

When troubleshooting performance or stability issues, get rid of (as in, completely UNINSTALL) any software that runs realtime and processes data - this includes security software, performance software, and anything that includes filter drivers (ISO mounting/burning utilities, non-native file system drivers, etc). All of these get a crack at I/O if they register as filter drivers (and most do), so even if they're not actively doing something they still can cause issues. Once you've got a system free of realtime software and random filter drivers, and you've fully patched the system from Microsoft Update and have rebooted twice since, if the problem persists, THEN trace things.

Just from experience, don't do anything until you've been set up in this way, otherwise data can be affected and point inaccurate fingers, or be just downright difficult to read.

Did you uninstall or just disable? As I've mentioned above, until you remove software with filter hooks into the system, they're *still called* even if they end up doing nothing for almost every I/O the system makes. You can only affect change by removing the software package itself, which (one would hope) also de-registers and removes the filter driver.