Very long cold boot (10 minutes)

My machine seems to work just fine, but it does an odd thing that I don't understand: when booting after a power-down, the Windows 7 boot takes more than 10 minutes. I get the "Starting Windows" screen, and then there's 10 minutes of continuous disk activity, and then finally a login screen.

It does not do this on a reboot---a reboot, without a power-down, takes less than a minute.

I've tried updating my BIOS and my SATA drivers, and these changes do change the behavior somewhat: sometimes the 10 minute delay is before the apperance of the Windows flag, sometimes after. But the fundamental behavior is unchanged. I attach an ntbtlog.txt file from an instance were the delay occurs. The only difference in the boot log between the 10 minute boot and the 1 minute boot is the last line: the loading of "asyncmac.sys" occurs for the 10 minute boot but not the 1 minute boot. I know that this driver is sometimes infected, but my copy checks out fine according to both my antivirus and its MD5 signature.

So maybe this is normal, somehow? Does anyone know what my computer is doing during those 10 minutes of furious disk access?

Do you have AV installed? if yes run a full scan.

Yes, of course I have antivirus, Norton Internet security. There are no indications of any infection problem with any system checker (I've used various free check-for-problems one-time scans), and in fact no indication of anything wrong with the system at all, aside from this long boot time problem.

I'm not even sure this is a problem, but it does seem like odd behavior.

i feel there is some bad sectors in yur hard disk.. dude... try doin disk checkin .. mostly it ll solve yur prob :)

Here's a progress report:

1) Holly C***! Apparently much of my problem was the solid color background delay

Solid Color Background Causes 30 Seconds Delay During the Logon Process in Windows 7 | Windows7hacker

I changed the background of my Aero desktop to a tiled solid-color bitmap that I created myself, instead of selecting a solid background and my system is greatly improved! It had been hanging multiple times a day, for about 30 seconds, during screen re-draws. Apparently this bug was affecting my system more than most. These annoying hangs have completely stopped. I had thought this problem was related to my boot-up problem, since the symptoms were similar (continuous disk activity, display working but otherwise hung).

2) However, the boot process still varies from 10 minutes to less than a minute. The 10 minute involves getting to the Windows flag on boot-up, and then there's 10 minutes of continuous disk access, and then it goes to the login screen. Upon reboot (or sometimes even just the second boot of the day), it will boot up in less than a minute.

3) It's not my disks. I've done a thorough check with Microsoft, Seagate, and WD software. There's no indication that my disks are in any way bad, and there is no significant re-mapping of bad sectors.

4) It's probably not a virus. I've got Norton Internet Security, and it seems to work fine and has no problems. A Malwarebytes scan also shows no problems.

So, any further suggestions? Note that my ntbtlog is posted above.

Did it always take 10min to boot first time...
If not, did it by any chance relate to a Norton Update?

Hate to say it because I hear it's greatly improved but I always suspect Norton of bad behavior, it was often worse than the virus itself.

Could it be Norton scanning the disk before boot. Have you checked Norton's preferences and see if there's a rootkit scan going on. I would even try temporarily disabling some of Norton's features just to see if boot times drop.

Ap