Windows 10: 20 minutes to boot :(

Hi all,

I'm experiencing some big issues with my computer since 2 days: when I try to boot it takes more than 20min to boot (and sometimes it doesn't boot).

Current situation with my drives:

Primary (OS & programs): Samsun 850 EVO
1st Archive: Caviar Blue 1TB
2nd Archive: 2 X Caviar Green 3TB (RAID 1)

Here's the rest:
W10 pro (clean install)
i5-2550k
16gb ram
GTX660ti


I've experienced this problem already some months ago, but I've solved it changing the SATA cable of the SSD + restoring the errors at the boot (booting from the USB drive with the W10 ISO on it).
I've tried now to do the same with the USB drive, but it just freezes at a black screen after a while.
I've checked all the drives health with Crystal Disk, and it looks like they're all good.

Hint: this morning it didn't boot at all; after some attempt (and 20 min of waiting) it booted and I've received the message like "Cannot access to the disk; files could be damaged". After that I've tried to open all my drives and I could access them.

My guess would be 1) faulty SSD 2) Corrupted OS 3) Damaged cable (again?) 4) damaged SATA controller.
What's yours?

Thank you!

:)

 

Windows 10 takes 20+ minutes to boot and then freezes for the next 10 minutes at Login screen; Hard Disk at 100%

Straight away - does it go into safe mode without trouble? Shift-restart.

 

Windows 10 takes 20+ minutes to boot and then freezes for the next 10 minutes at Login screen; Hard Disk at 100%

I recently went back to using my Desktop PC, everything was running smoothly for over 10 days until 2 days ago, when my desktop started exhibiting weird symptoms.

Suddenly, booting started taking over 20+ minutes (as opposed to under 30 seconds under normal circumstances) and it makes me frustratingly wait again for more than 10 minutes at the login screen.

The hard disk light glows constantly, indicating the fact that it's running at 100%. Once I logged-in after an INSANELY frustrating wait, Resource Monitor showed that some process with a super generic name of "system" was performing intense
write operation on some sector of the disk.

When I looked at event viewer, under the 'system' tab, I could find a large bunch of errors with 'disk' tag, with the description: "The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block."

After this, I ran SMART test on my hard drive using SeaTools for Windows. My hard drive (which is less than 2 years old) passed all the tests.

Now, I when I tried restarting again, I encountered the same issue. Had to wait for an insanely long time, which actually tested my patience.

Now, I don't know how to proceed ahead. Although I can always clean install Windows 10 again, I don't want to go through that on a frickin' weekday if I find an easier solution before that.

Help me.

Thank you.

 

Schedule a chkdsk /r on your boot drive at startup

 

This sounds like interconnectivity to the SSD (bad cable or SATA controller). Have you moved the cable to a different SATA port? Since the computer successfully boots (eventually in most cases) it does not sound like a corrupted OS.

 

I've done that but it got stucked at 11% for about 15-20min. I will run it again in the morning for the whole day.

I've tried to change both the cable and the SATA port, but sadly nothing has changed.

 

There's no mention of a mobo....what make/model mobo do you have? Does it have all the latest drivers installed? Does it have the latest BIOS installed?

Another thing that concerns me.....with all 4 drives installed, is the MBR location. Doing a install on a HDD with other HDD's installed can lead to issues. Only if one of the other HDD's had an OS installed.

 

The mobo is the Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 and yes it has the latest firmware.
As for the installation of the OS, all the hard drives never had an OS installed; they just contains data. The system drive has been installed with W10 from scratch for just 1 time.

Everything was working absolutely fine until a few days ago, and actually that started to happen while there was a big thunderstorm. My poweroutlet is protected against these things, but who knows. So my guess is starting to move against the mobo.

Anyway once the computer boots (after indeed a long time), it is fast and snappy as usual.