Windows 10: W10 pretty blue screen with circling dots on boot up/restart

Lenovo Y500 laptop takes hours to boot but then appears to run normally. It's been doing this for quite a while, I just haven't taken the time to try to track down the culprit.

This is my daughter's laptop. Came as a Win8 or Win8.1 laptop and took the free upgrade to W10 when it first became available. AFAIK, it ran normally for a long time. I learned about the lengthy boot issue long after it began so I have no idea what caused/es this lengthy boot.

It is repeatable. I have a pretty blue screen with the circling dots. Right now it's been going for about 90 minutes or so. I expect it will be operational within the next hour or so.

How would I go about tracking down the culprit? I'm tempted to wipe it and put Win 8.1 back on it, but I guess I would lose the free upgrade to Win 10 (if you can call it that).

I honestly much prefer Win 8.1 using Classic shell in place of the Metro interface. Regardless, W10 is the future going forward so I would like to fix this if I can. Any suggestions how to proceed?

:)

 

W10 keeps rebooting after upgrade

W10 recently updated my OS. At one point I received the blue screen with the circle of dots spinning and a % complete indicated and counting up. While waiting overnight for the update to complete, my computer went into sleep mode. I was unable to get
it out of sleep mode - I kept getting the blue screen with the spinning circle of dots (and not indication of update completion %) or would get to the screen where you enter in your password, but before I can enter it in, the screen goes back to the blue screen
with spinning dots; or I get to the screen where you can enter the password, but the area where you enter your password is blank - no date entry field - just the black screen with a window on the right hand side and the network/accessibility/power icons in
the lower right - all of which are functional. I've tried to do the reboot in safe mode by holding 'shift' and clicking restart but it just goes back to the blue screen with spinning circle. I don't know how else I can boot into safe mode. I had not set
up a boot cd or usb previous. Thank you.

 

Windows 10 won't get past logo screen after last critical update

Aaaaand we're back to the same old thing again. This morning, no blue HP screen, no disk drive, black logo screen but no dot circle, no boot up.

Gee this is fun. Every morning, a little guessing game. Will it boot up or will I have to restart? Sigh...

 

This issue is now resolved. I was working it the other day and finally got the W10 anniversary update (1607) to install. Once this completed, the laptop was back to normal boot times and operation.

One thing I noticed, I was using Avira free AV and it had NOT updated in a long time (perhaps as long as this boot issue had been going on... but I dunno). I uninstalled Avira since it was so out of date and the Windows 10 update then installed (I seem to recall the 1607 update pending through several reboots before I uninstalled the problem AV). After the update was complete, I installed Avast free and all has been running normally since then.

I don't know if the Avira issue directly affected the bootup time and slow response and/or the update issue, or if that was coincidental. I've always had pretty good luck with Avira or Avast, although there was a time when Avast caused a laptop issue that Avira fixed, which is why I moved to Avira in the first place. Regardless, I'm back to Avast now and all is working well.

 

Glad to hear it. Unfortunately a number of reports of long logins and circling dots, as you know.

You can still use Classic Shell on Win 10... I and a good many others here do. There's no difficulty - or should be no difficulty - in installing it. Win 10's menu is utterly useless to me as I have a large categorised start menu with subfolders; it strips the shortcuts from the folders and displays them alphabetically. (Think Help Help Help Help..... Readme Readme Readme...).

 

Glad to hear your issue is resolved. It is ALWAYS a good idea before a major Upgrade to disable, or even better, uninstall 3rd party antivirus programs. It is a known issue from the introduction of Windows 10. Easy enough to reinstall, if you don't like Defender.

 

Thanks dalchina. For some reason, it never crossed my mind to use Classic Shell when I moved from 8.1 to 10. Hmm. *Wink

mrgeek, I've never disabled or uninstalled an AV program prior to general updates. I don't even see the option in W10 to let me choose when to install updates. Looks like you can only choose to schedule or not the restart. At not in any options that I've found yet.

 

Restarts in the anniversary edition are limited by 'active hours' - which annoyingly isn't found as such by searching Settings. This allows you to specify up to a 12 hour period in which restarts are not permitted.

My experience: even if the restart
- first occurs during the active hours period, it is not applied after the end of it
- first occurs outside the active hours period, does not occur automatically.

In both cases I'm notified of a pending restart.

If a restart is pending, you can specify that active hours is overridden.

Further: using a utility like 'Don't Sleep' (free) to constrain restart/sleep/hibernate probably offers a further option.

 

"I've never disabled or uninstalled an AV program prior to general updates."

I was not referring to general Windows updates but major Upgrades like 1511 or 1607 which were essentially an OS reinstall or if you're doing an in-place Repair or Upgrade from an ISO. No different than program installs asking you to disable antivirus before executing. They may block or quarantine essential files that they've never seen.

 

That's all well and good, but how is one to differentiate between "normal" and "major" OS upgrades? And if you leave the PC unattended long enough, it's going to reboot on its own anyway. Or such has been my experience. I leave my PC on 24/7.

 

Pro & Enterprise versions allow you to defer upgrades (e.g. 1511, 1607....) as distinct from updates.

Further: using a utility like 'Don't Sleep' (free) to constrain restart/sleep/hibernate probably offers a further option...
to stop your PC restarting