Windows 7: Sloooowww Win 7 boot time, Event viewer info attached

My Win 7 SP1/64 Dell desktop system takes up to 4 or even 5 minutes to boot up. Doing a "clean boot" it still takes almost 3 minutes.

This has been going on a while, so I reinstalled Windows 7 SP1 and installed all the updates. It only seemed to make it worse.

I use Security Essentials, and it claims there are no viruses/malware. I've run MalwareBytes and it too says the system is clean.

Doing some research, I learned about the Event Viewer, so I ran it and got nothing but warnings of degradation and critical errors. In the non-clean boot, PreShellInit seems to be the worst culprit. In the clean boot, it is one of several degrading processes.

Below are the Event Viewer errors for the clean boot. Any help and suggestions on how to fix this are much appreciated.

Thanks,
EdB

`````````````Event Viewer info```````````````
Total degradation time
Windows has started up:
Boot Duration : 167803ms
IsDegradation : false
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2014‎-‎06‎-‎03T02:34:54.624800300Z

File Name : svchost.exe
Friendly Name : Host Process for Windows Services
Version : 6.1.7600.16385 (win7_rtm.090713-1255)
Total Time : 11269ms
Degradation Time : 5269ms
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2014‎-‎06‎-‎03T02:34:54.624800300Z

File Name : ehrec.exe
Friendly Name : Windows Media Center Host Module
Version : 6.1.7600.16385 (win7_rtm.090713-1255)
Total Time : 26123ms
Degradation Time : 21123ms
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2014‎-‎06‎-‎03T02:34:54.624800300Z

Name : PreShellInit
Total Time : 11344ms
Degradation Time : 15849ms
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2014‎-‎06‎-‎03T02:34:54.624800300Z

File Name : sftlist.exe
Friendly Name : Microsoft Application Virtualization Client Service
Version : 4.6.3.24650
Total Time : 3248ms
Degradation Time : 748ms
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2014‎-‎06‎-‎03T02:34:54.624800300Z


+ System

- Provider

[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance
[ Guid] {CFC18EC0-96B1-4EBA-961B-622CAEE05B0A}

EventID 100

Version 2

Level 1

Task 4002

Opcode 34

Keywords 0x8000000000010000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2014-06-03T02:37:46.805901000Z

EventRecordID 4635

- Correlation

[ ActivityID] {03715C60-F800-0004-44B1-2D67D47ECF01}

- Execution

[ ProcessID] 1624
[ ThreadID] 1772

Channel Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational

Computer Turing

- Security

[ UserID] S-1-5-19


- EventData

BootTsVersion 2
BootStartTime 2014-06-03T02:34:54.624800300Z
BootEndTime 2014-06-03T02:37:44.107096300Z
SystemBootInstance 18
UserBootInstance 13
BootTime 167803
MainPathBootTime 74632
BootKernelInitTime 16
BootDriverInitTime 847
BootDevicesInitTime 1668
BootPrefetchInitTime 0
BootPrefetchBytes 0
BootAutoChkTime 0
BootSmssInitTime 24007
BootCriticalServicesInitTime 4506
BootUserProfileProcessingTime 11344
BootMachineProfileProcessingTime 74
BootExplorerInitTime 19238
BootNumStartupApps 0
BootPostBootTime 93171
BootIsRebootAfterInstall false
BootRootCauseStepImprovementBits 0
BootRootCauseGradualImprovementBits 0
BootRootCauseStepDegradationBits 2097152
BootRootCauseGradualDegradationBits 0
BootIsDegradation false
BootIsStepDegradation false
BootIsGradualDegradation false
BootImprovementDelta 0
BootDegradationDelta 0
BootIsRootCauseIdentified true
OSLoaderDuration 2848
BootPNPInitStartTimeMS 16
BootPNPInitDuration 1690
OtherKernelInitDuration 2826
SystemPNPInitStartTimeMS 4138
SystemPNPInitDuration 825
SessionInitStartTimeMS 5342
Session0InitDuration 17594
Session1InitDuration 486
SessionInitOtherDuration 5925
WinLogonStartTimeMS 29349
OtherLogonInitActivityDuration 14626
UserLogonWaitDuration 1679

OK Download the trial of HD Sentinel to rule out a dying hard drive.

Download Hard Disk Sentinel

Post a screen shot of the results.

Thanks for the reply. No problems with the drives; Disk Sentinel gives them 100%.

I've been trying various boot configurations - clean, selected, full - and the times are all over the place no matter which configuration I use. Here's the latest, which isn't too bad:

Windows has started up:
Boot Duration : 192794ms
IsDegradation : false
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2014‎-‎06‎-‎05T01:25:52.624800300Z

- System

- Provider

[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance
[ Guid] {CFC18EC0-96B1-4EBA-961B-622CAEE05B0A}

EventID 100

Version 2

Level 1

Task 4002

Opcode 34

Keywords 0x8000000000010000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2014-06-05T01:29:15.220154900Z

EventRecordID 4707

- Correlation

[ ActivityID] {0370DC50-F800-0002-4526-2E175D80CF01}

- Execution

[ ProcessID] 1808
[ ThreadID] 4024

Channel Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational

Computer Turing

- Security

[ UserID] S-1-5-19


- EventData

BootTsVersion 2
BootStartTime 2014-06-05T01:25:52.624800300Z
BootEndTime 2014-06-05T01:29:12.365349900Z
SystemBootInstance 30
UserBootInstance 25
BootTime 192794
MainPathBootTime 94794
BootKernelInitTime 17
BootDriverInitTime 1049
BootDevicesInitTime 1728
BootPrefetchInitTime 0
BootPrefetchBytes 0
BootAutoChkTime 0
BootSmssInitTime 27662
BootCriticalServicesInitTime 4252
BootUserProfileProcessingTime 10894
BootMachineProfileProcessingTime 27
BootExplorerInitTime 33190
BootNumStartupApps 11
BootPostBootTime 98000
BootIsRebootAfterInstall false
BootRootCauseStepImprovementBits 0
BootRootCauseGradualImprovementBits 0
BootRootCauseStepDegradationBits 0
BootRootCauseGradualDegradationBits 0
BootIsDegradation false
BootIsStepDegradation false
BootIsGradualDegradation false
BootImprovementDelta 0
BootDegradationDelta 0
BootIsRootCauseIdentified false
OSLoaderDuration 2821
BootPNPInitStartTimeMS 17
BootPNPInitDuration 1752
OtherKernelInitDuration 2439
SystemPNPInitStartTimeMS 3929
SystemPNPInitDuration 1025
SessionInitStartTimeMS 5217
Session0InitDuration 20466
Session1InitDuration 520
SessionInitOtherDuration 6674
WinLogonStartTimeMS 32879
OtherLogonInitActivityDuration 17802
UserLogonWaitDuration 2088

Well that is good news and the hard drive can be ruled out. Have you scanned for malware? Viri? Silly question, have you defragged the C drive lately? You could run system file checker SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker See what happens then. You may need to run it 3 times. Please fill in your system specs. System Info - See Your System Specs
Your problem could be a lack of system resources such as memory.