Windows7 Ultimate 64 takes 7 mins to get from windows logo to login

[jonKennedy]

Hello,

I've been googling and trying suggestions from forums on this problem for a couple of days and no luck.....

A couple of weeks ago it appeared that my computer would get a Black Screen of Death after the windows logo. But it turned out that if you wait 7mins (along time to wait with nothing on the screen, not even cursor) it does get to the login screen. I don't think any new software was added around this time, although there could have been some updates.

The same happens if you boot in safe mode, or a Diagnostic Boot from msconfig so I'm thinking its not to do with a service or startup item (??).

I've ran chkdsk, sfc and windows memory diagnostic tool. All OK.

I've tried unplugging everything from the computer including my second harddrive and the DVDrom drive. Still no difference.

When booting into safe mode / diagnostic mode the list of loaded drivers scrolls by, the last one displayed is CLASSPNP then there is a long pause then the screen goes black for around 7 mins before a pointer appears then the login.

Looking at ntbootlogin.txt I see there are many drivers that get added after CLASSPNP but these are not displayed on the screen. The one after CLASSPNP is cdrom, hence me trying to boot with DVD drive unconnected.

I downloaded WinBootInfo and have ran this a few times. The CPU activity graph during boot is interesting. Essentially nothing happens for a five minute period during boot. Looking at the list of SYS and DLL files that load and the times they load there is indeed a 5 min gap where nothing is loaded.

One of the first things to load after the 5 min gap is Luafv.sys which a google says is LUA File Virtulaisation Driver. Is it taking 5 minutes to load this driver? There are other items that are loaded just after the long pause, but I don't know if I'm being simplistic in assuming the pause is due to one of the files loaded just after.

Am pondering doing a complete re-install but really wanted to try and work out what was going on and solve it rather than spend a lot of time re-installing and setting up a lot of things.

Is there a better diagnostic tool that I should be using rather than WinBootInfo?
Any thoughts / ideas greatly appreciated......

Oh, I have:
Dell Precision T7500
Windows 7 Ultimate 64

Cheers

Jon

 

[Golden]

Hi Jon and welcome to SevenForums,

You've already done a very detailed forensic examination of the problem, so I feel you are a good candidate for this tutorial that Cluberti developed. He is an expert (if not the expert) at this, so I'll ask him to have a look at this for you.

Please follow the tutorial, then post back here for Cluberti.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...up-shutdown-sleep-hibernate-reboot-trace.html

Can you also complete your system specs using this tutorial, as it may be helpful in solving your problem:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/180324-system-info-see-your-system-specs.html

Regards,
Golden

 

[jonKennedy]

Hello Golden,
Ah, yes, I have seen references to this. I will work through the tutorial and get back to you.
Many Thanks
Jon

 

[cluberti]

Thanks for the heads-up Golden. jonKennedy, when you do get a trace uploaded somewhere, please post the link here and we'll take a look.

 

[jonKennedy]

Hey cluberti! Yes, will do. I'm away from the computer I'm having problems with for a couple of days. Will run through your tutorial on Monday and post the trace.....
Many Thanks
jon

 

[jonKennedy]

Hello cluberti,
OK, bit of a problem creating a boot trace.
Installed all the tools OK, made the registry change, then restarted OK (the usual 7 minutes).
Copied the cmd line from the tutorial, enter.
It restarted, since I have some msconfig settings still selected I see the loaded drivers scroll by. It stops after CLASSPNP as before, long pause as before, but then instead of a black screen for 5 mins I get a blue screen crash "*** STOP: 0x0000007E etc. (I can send you the full tech info line if useful)
It then auto restarts only to blue screen at the same point. The only way out of the cycle is to roll back to Recovery point (that I made just before trying this).
Once its recovered and I've got back into Windows there is a Boot Trace file but it is only 27 seconds long so I assume only up to the blue screen.
I can upload this somewhere if you think it may be useful? Not sure if there is anything I can try to avoid getting the blue screen and therefore record a full boot trace.....
Thanks Again
Jon

 

[cluberti]

Try the command line again, but without +DRIVERS - there's a bug in Win7 under specific circumstances that can cause that bbugcheck.

Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express

 

[jonKennedy]

Hello cluberti,

OK, I have succesfuly created a boot trace, it is here:
https://rapidshare.com/files/2010090330/boot.zip


However, there was an error message at the end of the capture, it said:

"Gave up waiting for Win7RTM physical prefetcher after 300 seconds
Could not wait for prefetcher
Couldn't find kernel logger in active logger list
Couldn't find user-mode logger in active logger list"

Perhaps I need to run the boot trace again with longer wait than 300 seconds?

I had a look at the graphs of the trace, it looks like there is a lot going on right at the end, so perhaps waiting longer would be good. My computer seems to currently take a long time to "settle down" once you've logged in.

However, I see from the traces that there is a long 300 second pause early on in the boot and this is the bigger problem I'm battling with. Perhaps the boot trace I've linked to is enough to look into this?

Let me know what you think or if there is anything I can do.....

Many Thanks!

Jon

 

[cluberti]

Downloading now.... slowly. The first warning can be ignored, and there's not much longer the trace can be run. I think what will be in here should be enough.

 

[cluberti]

Well, here are my initial findings - I'm going to keep looking at this when I get back from vacation next week.

First, the last driver to be called is the Adobe font manager driver (atmfd.sys), at 31.985 seconds - this is slow to load drivers for sure, but not inordinately slow. The next driver to load is luafv.sys (the UAC filesystem redirection filter driver that does File And Registry Virtualization, or FARV), and the rest of the drivers load in short order. I'd say this is our delay point, but i'm still not sure why.

In looking further, the last device to be enumerated (right before this driver, at 31.973 seconds) is your logitech mouse. It takes until almost 474 seconds to enumerate the rest of the USB UMBUS, which is interesting.

I notice that perfinfo is checked every 15 seconds during the delay, so the system is NOT hung in any way. It's waiting, but it's not hung.

The winlogon primary terminal is created at 32.366 seconds, but you don't get to see the winlogon screen (at all) until 353.131 seconds. That probably is your black screen with cursor. This is where the delay is, but I've not readily determined yet where it is. I need to get on a faster network connection and get symbols to start looking at this stack information.

In the meantime, I need for you to do a quick test. Specifically, please disable (via ncpa.cpl) all network adapters on your system and reboot, and see if you still get the delay or if the machine boots successfully. Please, whilst I debug this further, test booting with your network connections disabled.

 

[jonKennedy]

Hello cluberti,
I tried disabling all the network adapters and re-starting, no difference, still a long long wait. May not be importnat but during the long wait there is no mouse pointer on the screen. Just a black screen.
Many thanks for looking into this. If it's a complete mystery I can just wipe my system completely and start again. Frustrating, but I don't want you to spend too much of your time on this.
Thanks again.
Jon

 

[cluberti]

I do see httpd.sys starting rather early, which is odd for a desktop. Did you install/enable dev tools or IIS on this box, perchance?

Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express

 

[jonKennedy]

Hello, I have Apache running on this machine as a test server. This has been installed for a long time, way before I started having any problems. Don't think I've installed any dev tools, certainly not recently.......