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#1
3 minutes "Windows Starting" delay due to Autochk
Hi All;
Please forgive me if I have missed the thread that is going to solve this problem, but I have literally spent this entire day trying to fix it, searching, reading, trying and then repeating the same routine dozens of times. Here is the deal.
As of this morning, my boot times went from about 30 seconds to 3-4 minutes. This is a fresh build (see specs below signature), not a lot installed here and most of the components are new and compatible from the research I have done. System has been up for about 4 days and has been running great. Last night, I had left the computer on (which I usually do not do) as there was 1.5 TB of files being transferred. This morning, it was all done, and I decided to do whatever "Windows Updates" I had not done yet. Did these and decided to give it a restart. As expected, shutdown and restart took a considerable amount of time as "Windows was being configured" with the updates. After that reboot, I checked for updates again, none available and I did another restart. This was my first experience of the 3-4 minute boot. I of course wanted to blame the updates I did, and consequently removed them all. It did not fix the issue. I went through many scenarios and options, and none have resolved the issue. I currently have two choices based on what I have tried and actually makes a difference:
- Deal with a VERY long start up time (all runs fine once in Windows)
- Get normal boot time, but deal with a delay once windows has started (once it starts it runs fine)
Option one happens when I do a Selective Startup (which is all I have done for many years) with all things loading, but the time from "Windows Starting" to seeing a logon screen is 3+ minutes. The MS Windows Performance Toolkit finally let me see what was going on, and it seems to be Autochk.exe taking 200+ seconds on each startup. I was originally blaming smssinit, but that was before I was able to see the detail in the xbootmgr screens after generating a report. I also learned that smssinit was more of a chaperone for other things that needed to run before winlogon takes over. I have done "Dirty Bit" checks on ALL drives in the system, all showing none. I have run check disk in windows on all drives and none came back with any errors. I ran another checkdisk on an external drive (the one I was transferring 1.5 TB from overnight), and it did find a problem and fixed it on that drive. That drive however, was turned off on my first restart at the beginning of all of this, so it should not have been affecting the startup times as it was off and disconnected. After the checkdisk on this drive fixed some errors, I did the dirty bit check and it said clean. I did NOT check for a dirty bit on this drive before I ran the checkdisk, simply forgot to.
Second scenario happens when I take out ALL entries in the "BootExecute" registry entry. Default entry is autocheck autochk * . If I remove that and restart, I then get normal boot times, but once I logon and windows starts, I have to wait about 3 minutes for anything to react. I can point with mouse and click on stuff, keyboard shortcuts will give me choices and menus, but if I try to click or start anything, it just does nothing, until about 3 minutes later when everything I have clicked on or tried to do all starts at once.
List of other things I have tried:
1. Windows repair using USB flash drive
2. Registry setting changes to other possibly relevant bits
3. Disconnection of all external drives ( I have not disconnected all internal drives but it is on my list of things to try if I can not get this resolved in a more peaceful fashion)
4. Hotfix updates
5. Driver updates from ASUS for certain components (already installed, but not updated after some of the windows updates so thought I should reinstall them - no love)
6. Other stuff I can not remember, it's been a long day ;~(((
So, any suggestions. Of course, I have not tried everything, and am just looking for that silver bullet that can put down this beast for a good nights rest (and a quick start first thing tomorrow ;~))). The way I see it, autocheck is looking to do some kind of run on startup and I have disabled it using multiple methods (registry and services and disabling in task manager) to no avail. When it does give me a faster boot time, I suspect that my delay in Windows is caused by the same issue (autocheck running) but I am not positive. I guess I should increase my time to let xbootmgr continue to record for that 3 minutes of windows time to see what is running there and preventing me from doing anything else. I will try that along with anything else y'all can suggest (if I have not tried it already).
Thanks for any help you can give me on this. I really don't want to spend Tuesday as well trying to figure this out, so hopefully someone will be my savior.
Cheers~
C
Build Specs:
Windows 7 Pro 64bit (UEFI installation)
i7-5820k
ASUS X99 Sabertooth
M.2 SM951 SSD 256 GB (main system drive)
Corsair ForceGT 128 GB (secondary system drive and scratch disk when using main drive)
4TB WD Red
16TB WD Red RAID5 (4x4TB Red's)
Corsair RAM 2133Mhz 16GB (2x8GB in B1 and D1)
Noctua NH-D15
EVGA Supernova 1000 G2 PSU
Antec Eleven case