Windows 10: Windows 10 extremely slow on startup

I have a 256 gig SSD with 88 gig free (not part of the profile).
I upgraded to Windows 10 two weeks ago. Everything seemed fine until Monday morning when it went into repair mode on startup. I had to reinstall from the media DVD.
Afterward, when it started, it was so slow as to be unusable. I noticed almost constant disk activity (from the light on the case). Did a normal shutdown.
Tuesday after startup the same thing happened. But about two hours later it was working normally. The Windows Update screen doesn't display, it just shows dots moving across it.
Yesterday, same thing. My wife did a hard shutdown from the case. When I started it later after work same slowness, only now the start menu refuses to launch. Task manager shows a huge amount of reads/writes from various processes, Windows mostly but also others, including Windows Defender ( I have Norton 360 so I don't need Windows Defender but didn't think to disable it).
Can someone please help?
Thank you.

:)

 

Extremely Slow Startup

No you will not lose your data.

 

Extremely Slow Startup

Hello,

At what boot phase did you experience the slowness, before you enter your credentials or after ?

If before, may be caused by an outdated driver. Try to update your drivers (Wifi card, Video, ...etc)

If after you logged in, may be caused by a network issue; if you have a Microsoft account, create a local account and see if it solve your problem.

It can also be caused by slow program or service startup ...

you can also, run these command to repair you image system, if somthing is corrupted:

- sfc /scannow

- Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

If none of this work, you can take a boot trace using Windows performance recorder Download and install the Windows ADK

Here is a tutorial on how to take a boot trace How To Use WPR To Record Windows Boot Process

When done, share your boot trace and I'll help you analyze it.

 

Definitely there are issues between various Anti Virus systems and Windows 10
I could not install Windows 10 with Avira running and now I needed to uninstall Avira completely to avoid constant warnings when I need to pickup files from HighTail or WeTransfer.

Windows Defender is supposed to do a decent job.... but I have never used it...

Good luck

 

But I did not have this problem for the two weeks prior after the upgrade. It just happened after the reinstall from the media DVD. And windows Defender is not the only process causing disk activity.

 

I'm not sure what brand of SSD you have, but on many older SSD's filling up to that capacity can choke its efficiency. The next time you have booted up, use Windows to optimize the SSD (basically invokes trim) and then leave the system on but unused for some time (overnight if possible). This will allow the SSD time to respond to the trim command and cleanup as well as allow its built-in garbage collection do its thing. If this works, I would suggest reducing the space used on the SSD.



SSD's unlike traditional hard disks should be secure erased before copying fairly massive amounts of data on top of existing data. What I suspect happened was: – the new install choked up the free 88 MB and then the SSD had to go through the far slower process of deleting nand and rewriting on existing used nand. It is still struggling to clean up the used nand.

 

That's very possible. However, I saw another thread where others had the same problem. They resolved it with a clean install.
So I did that and formatted the drive. But after installing my graphics card software I lost the system tray and apps would launch but not display. I tried this 3 times, each time formatting the SSD first. But the graphics software somehow remained. I could see it when I right clicked on the taskbar. And if I tried to use it, like launching screen resolution, I lost the display like I did above. So I don't know how it could have remained if I formatted the drive.
Today I will remove the graphics card and just try using the graphics from the mobo. If the graphics card software is still there I will see if I can uninstall it.
If that doesn't work it's back to Windows 7.

 

Formatting is not the same as secure erasing. I think you need to do that first .

 

If you use a PCIE gfx card make sure the onboard chip is disabled in your bios.

 

Depending on the brand off your SSD, most manufacturers, Intel, crucial, OCZ have specific software that is best used with their SSD's. They are generic tools that would also perform this process.
Unlike hard drives where writes to the hard drive essentially overwrite old data, SSD's have to perform a two-step process that involves cleaning the NAND of old data before they can write on the NAND's. In most SSD's there is always enough clean NAND so that their speed is not affected. The trim command/Instruction for example helps the SSD identify NAND that has information on it and during idle periods the SSD performs a background cleaning of this NAND. Most SSD's also have a built-in garbage collection process that can perform the cleaning without the trim instruction, though not as efficiently.
In your case, I suspect that the new install pretty much wiped out your free NAND and your SSD has to perform the erase and write function on additional activities. This can effectively and noticeably slow down it's performance. As crazy as it sounds, using less than 80% capacity on all SSD's is advised. Most modern SSD's have built-in excess capacity to help in this process, but massive writes associated with an OS install can overburden this excess capacity. Every time you format and reinstall an OS you are absorbing any free NAND and creating this bottleneck. Typically, one should secure erase an SSD before formatting and installing a new OS. That way, the SSD performs like new. Hope this helps. If you post the manufacturer of your SSD I might be able to direct you to the appropriate tool.

 

Thanks for the info. I called Adata support and they said the drive should not be a problem. I know about their toolbox. But I've successfully installed Windows 10 now. I'm in the process of reinstalling my apps.

I did have another problem that resulted in my removing my graphics card. After installing the current driver I lost the system tray from the display and apps would launch but not display on the monitor. I didn't think of this until after removing the graphics card, but is it possible the graphics card's driver thought my monitor was wider and was displaying windows to the right and off the screen?

 

A lot if not nearly all people with high spec machines experiencing low W10. Not logical unless there is something wrong with the installing of the OS.

 

Step 1: Backup your data, and do that now and first before the next steps.
Step 2: how many different profiles are on the machine? How big is the initial load? ALT-X -->System -->Advanced System Settings --> User Profiles. Also is there maybe a huge ISO sitting on your desktop? Remember your desktop is loaded partially into memory.
Step 3: Start your machine, be it painfully slow, start msconfig and disable everything (you can do a Diagnostic Startup as well). Also stop all services in MsConfig Services tab. Click Startup Tab and disable everything there. - Reboot
Step4: After reboot some of your settings might be off or look completely different, depending on if you are running any services that perform things like continuous scanning like some antivirus programs do. Why it only happened two weeks after, maybe because it was set to perform a full system scan on a schedule and you have a lot of zip files - it needs to unpack them and generate a signature.... Your bootup should now be faster, if not then there are bigger problems.
Step 5: SSD - make sure hibernation and page file are off, also make sure your disk is trimmed optimally.
Step 6: Only if the bootup times have returned to acceptable values start enabling the services and startup items, reboot EACH time after you enable one step to see if you can identify the matter. It could be as silly as a corrupted config or definition file (antivirus or even a desktop conf file).
Step 7: There can be a problem with one of the memory sims, only to show up if you load up more than 4GB.
Step 8: As you notice it is time consuming to perform these steps, so be patient, take lots of time (no rushing). Also it can frustrating too if people are waiting to use the laptop.... believe me I know.