Windows 10: Very slow boot time - 100% disk active time

Is the superfetch service enabled. If not enable it and restart your machine 6 times. You'll notice improvements after that

 

Will do... Although another member here said that superfetch might be the reason why the laptop was too slow... I guess I'll have to check and see.

 

Superfetch when working properly will improve HDD performance caching data frequently accessed.

 

I do not think anything is wrong other than impatience,
1) The HDD speed is typical of a laptop 1 TB HDD (the SSD users have the memory loss).
2) Defragmentation is done automatically to a schedule in Windows 10. I just set that to weekly or monthly. Worst mine ever gets to is ~2%. Not that it matters with modern disc filing systems.
3) Supposed ASUS bloatware - You can at leisure uninstall things not wanted after consideration, it's not that a big deal.

"I have also noticed that the first time I open an office file (xls, docx, ppt), it takes about 10 seconds !! Every other time I open the same type of file during the same Windows session (i.e. no reboots), it opens almost instantaneously as it should be. I honestly don't know why this happens, but I guess it has to do with Office itself."
This is Windows Prefetch and Super Prefetch working. You must wait a while until the data is collected.
On mine a Word or Excel file on 1st opening is ~1 to 2 sec, subsequent opening is far less than 1 sec. This on a standard Laptop 1 TB HDD.
The data for this is redone after a while.

"I factory reset the laptop back to its original setup once, so that might have played its role in the fragmentation."
" I performed a clean install of windows without the ASUS bloatware"
Either of those get you back to square one and a load of updates and Windows management stuff has to be done yet again. The fragmentation matters little in modern disc filing systems.

 

Yeah, you are right. I was not aware of the Prefetch thing and by no means was I expecting for the performance to improve over time. Guess I'll have to wait a few weeks before I judge the laptop's performance after all...

 

I don't use this, so I'm not familiar with it at all, but, can you set this for a delayed start?