Help.Black screen before Login Menu. Minor annoyance but needs fixing.

Thanks, but I seriously doubt this is a hardware issue. The problem is just too specific/localized to not show effects elsewhere (doesn't happen booting into Safe Mode, Doesn't happen booting into Linux. No sign of instability once the computer is running.)

Yesterday, I was able to solve a different issue also caused by restoring such an old backup: my WMC EPG refused to update more than the first 7 channels. After lots of help from other users, we were able to deduce it was a corrupted database, and resetting it by manually running a particular Windows Service fixed it.)

I'm suspecting something similar here. Windows is likely trying to initiate some defunct or corupted process during boot (it occurs *between* the "Starting Windows" glowing logo screen and appearance of the Login screen) and timing out after some preset delay.

Now if only I could figure out what that is. Thx.

Have your tried boot logging with Process Monitor? You can start with a 1 second interval or go with 100 milliseconds for highest boot detail

Process Monitor

"Boot Logging

Process Monitor can log activity from a point very early in the boot process during the initialization of boot-start device drivers. Configure Process Monitor to log the next boot by selecting Enable Boot Logging from the Options menu. Process Monitor's driver will log activity at the next boot into a file in the %Windir% directory and will continue logging through the shutdown or until you run Process Monitor again. Thus, if you don't run Process Monitor during a boot session you will capture a trace of the entire boot to shutdown cycle. Process Monitor supports thread profiling capture in boot logging. When you enable boot logging on supported operating systems, Process Monitor will present a dialog that asks whether boot logging should include thread profiling, and if so, the rate of the profiling. Note that thread profiling will significantly grow the size of a boot log.

(Quick reply.)

Sorry for the late reply. I haven't forgotten, I just have been very busy. I'm still looking into this.

I'm not sure that any Windows-based app will help though since the pause takes place before Windows loads. It would need to be some sort of boot app... possibly loaded from a boot disk... to monitor the process during boot.

I'll follow up once I've had a chance to look into using the app. Thx.

johnhoh said:

Have your tried boot logging with Process Monitor?

Dude, you are awesome!

The Process Monitor picked up 4 big gaps early in the boot process (even at 1sec intervals, the log was ENORMOUS! Who knew so so much happened every second? 200 pages of events in some instances.)

I located 4 "large" gaps early on that accounted for 76 of my 81 second delay, and two of those were while executing apps related to my "Advanced System Care" maintenance software (I suspect I had v9 when the backup was created 8 months ago, and v10 installed on my PC since then, causing some sort of hickup.)

I completely uninstalled ASC, rebooted and the pause was gone! Great! Thanks.