Slow shutdown and startup plus grey screen after startup

[Whisperss]

Hi guys,
I've been barking at this tree for some time now and have tried just about every trick I could locate on the internet and I don't have an answer. My laptop takes 2-3 minutes to shutdown and if I haven't used msconfig to disable all startup items and services, it can take nearly 10 minutes to boot up to a responsive state! Now, right after logon, I am getting this grey screen for about 90 seconds before getting into the desktop. Last night as I was trying to do a clean startup following procedures to determine the possible Services conflict, I noticed that during the grey screen it showed one of those stupid "Windows Is Not Genuine" messages in the bottom right corner. However, when I rebooted this morning to record the whole process, that message is gone but the screen persists. Is my GPU dying? Do I need to give up and reinstall Windows? If so, how do I do that without losing all of my data? For those interested, I recorded the whole shutdown/startup process on my phone and posted it to YouTube. Perhaps there is something there that catches your eye. I've tried running Startup Repair, no joy. Same with CHKDSK, SFC /Scannow, and Memtest. The video is here SevenForums - YouTube. I've stripped the Startup Programs, altered response times for shutting down programs, tried so many things I can't even remember them all so even if you think I might have tried it already, please tell me anyway because I might have missed it the first dozen tries or so

 

[Megahertz07]

It can be a disk problem.
Schedule a disk check

 

[Whisperss]

It can be a disk problem.
Schedule a disk check

It is a 6 year old machine... Let me get back to you with the results.

 

[Whisperss]

UPDATE:
Well I ran CHKDSK and had to step away for a bit, just in time for it to finish and decide it was going to automatically reboot before I could peek at the results. However, I used an open source program called CrystalDiskInfo and its specs show the HDD health to be running 5/5 in every category, none of which were even remotely close to the recommended threshold. It gives me similar specs as Ashampoo's HHD2 Monitor. As it doesn't read the surface, I used HD Tune for that and again, everything came up clean. Zero sector replacement ops, unstable sectors, uncorrected errors, ECC errors, or interface communication errors. However, there were 4,605 write errors which doesn't seem to be alarming to the software so I'm assuming that's within normal limits. Spin up time is 3.5 seconds. Hardware read errors (raw read error rate): 15,174, again within the software's stated safe limits. Once again, the specs show the drive running 5/5. Any other ideas?

 

[Megahertz07]

You should run chkdsk c: /r to test the disk surface.

Boot from the win 7 installation disk, go to repair and launch a CMD window and type
chkdsk c: /r

It will take a long time. When it finish it won't reboot so you can see the results.

 

[Whisperss]

You should run chkdsk c: /r to test the disk surface.

Boot from the win 7 installation disk, go to repair and launch a CMD window and type
chkdsk c: /r

It will take a long time. When it finish it won't reboot so you can see the results.

I'll run it tonight and post results in the morning.

 

[Whisperss]

Just out of curiosity, how full does the drive get before it starts to slow down? I've got about 60-70GB left on a 1TB drive.

 

[Megahertz07]

There is still a lot of free space on it.
My C: drive partition has 83G, 53G used and 30G free.
Did you do the check disk?

 

[Whisperss]

Couldn't. Machine won't boot from install disk, I'd forgotten that. Can't change the boot order in the BIOS either cuz some time back I was an idiot and password protected it and then forgot to write that password down so unless y'all have some trick for finding that password, I either need another idea or... I don't even know. Also, last night as I was rebooting the computer yet again it wouldn't connect to the internet. I went into the Device Manager and looked at my adapters only to discover that all four of my ISATAP adapters had a Code 10 (cannot start). Quick research showed I could uninstall them and they would reload with fresh drivers upon reboot but that hasn't happened. None of them came back. On one hand, I got onto the internet again but on the other, how badly did I need them?

What if I flashed the BIOS? Or would I need the password for that as well?

 

[Megahertz07]

Most computers has a Boot menu that you launch during POST. On mine is F12.
Try esc = Boot drive options, and BIOS setup

 

[Whisperss]

The F12 key worked for me... right up until it wanted said lost password

 

[Megahertz07]

Did you try esc?

 

[Layback Bear]

Just a reminder.

All disk need about 10 % free space to allow Windows 7 to work with it properly.

Jack

 

[Whisperss]

No, I forgot that part. BTW for future reference for the next guy, I solved the slow shutdown problem. I edited the registry so that it would not dump the pagefile upon shutdown and now it shuts down at a right reasonable speed Now, if only the startup was such a simple fix...
@jack, the partition that has my OS on it is 150GB in size and still has 27GB left so if I counted my toes right, we're good there.

 

[Whisperss]

Tried the escape key and it wouldn't leave the password screen. Any other suggestions?

 

[Layback Bear]

Looking at your pictures in Post #1, you are trying to run check disk on partition 'D' Movies and Music not 'C'.
How much free space is on partition 'D'?