Solved Win 7.1 HPremium takes 20 minutes to boot! Is this an indexing issue?

Action taken to resolve

1. Run CCleaner to cleanup windows “crud”; Chrome reset.
2. Also ran disk cleanup
3. Run adwcleaner to check for signs of malware, only found items relating to AVG
4. Run sfc /scannow – no issues
5. Run chkdsk c:/r – clean
6. Run defrag
7. Problem with Windows Update resolved via deletion of Software Distribution and Catroot2
8. Several issues on the event manager, see below
9. No restore point to resolve.

We note if we start the task manager during the boot, we can close internet explorer and restart it, to work around this problem. This may relate to errors we see on the event logs as follows:

i Esent event ID 455 error 1811
ii Followed by many “Gatherer” errors starting with event ID 9000 – implies an indexing issue?
iii Fatal Schannel error event ID 36887 fatal alert 70

This may be naiveity on my part, MS offline storage feature is on (& indexing is off), but no specific “service” related to it.

Any suggestions apart from install clean version of the OS?

It is possible that there is a misbehaving program which is loading when you log into Windows, slowing everything down. Here's how you can see if that is the case, and fix the problem:

Run MSCONFIG. Go to the Services Tab. Check the box to "Hide all Microsoft services". Click Apply. At this point, you will see only the non-Microsoft services. Disable all of them. Click Apply then OK. Reboot.

If the problem has disappeared, then one (or more) of the non-Microsoft services is the culprit. Now, you will need to re-enable each one of them, one at a time, with a reboot after each re-enable, to see which one slows down the computer. If you find one that slows down the computer, write down which one it is, and re-disable it, this time leaving it disabled. Reboot.

Do this for EACH service, even after finding one or more which slowed down the computer, to make sure you have checked each service.

You can speed up this process some. On the first re-enable, rather than re-enabling just one service, re-enable everything that you think is a legitimate service (such as your anti-virus program or your scanner program), then reboot. You will likely find that re-enabling all of those services did not slow down the computer. But if it did, re-disable them all and start over.

The problem of the computer taking forever to log into Windows is often caused by a misbehaving program which loads when you log into Windows; so I expect that the above procedure will fix the problem for you.

Thats a good suggestion - why didn't I think of that. Will try it and post back

It's also possible that your boot hard drive is failing. I had this happen in a laptop once. Very hard to diagnose. I replaced the HDD as a test and poof! It booted right up. I replaced the bad hard drive, reinstalled Windows and it's been running like a champ ever since.

Yes it can happen, but a cause can also be a rootkit - I had another like this very difficult to discover whether it was a damaged hdd or a virus. In the end after doing all the antimalware stuff (Combofix , tssdkiller, etc), and using chkdsk and Seagate Seatools (long test was clean). It was easier to re-install, in this case on the original drive - so in this case it was most likely a rootkit.

Thanks for your help every one Sorted but not as expected.

Tried Jim Phelps suggestion unfortunately made no difference. However the system booted fine in Safe mode.

In the end we found that two programs were causing the issue. 1. Avast Antivirus (not the first time) and 2. Express Invoicing.

We uninstalled Avast, we upgrade Express Invoicing to the latest version. The re-installed Avast.

Problem gone.

Kicking myself as uninstalling Avast often sorts this type o problem; should have thought of that earlier.

glad to hear that @robmar0se but why don't u consider changing your AV, if its causing issues on a routine basis ?

If you're after the free version there are no.of decent alternatives: Bitdefender, Comodo, Kaspersky, Avira -> I've had serious loading issues with Avast - its probably the crappiest when it comes to loading, so I changed to Avira in the past & later jumped to Bitdefender free version after testing Avast again if there's any change & it was nada, so went to BD free version, now paid version.

For paid versions - Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Symantec -> these are the only 3 I have tested or used in computers, so I can't suggest something I haven't tried

I use Trend Micro for Windows, and Sophos for Linux.