Windows 10: Windows is taking very long to boot to login screen

I have Win 10 x64 Pro and this is on a new PC and a fresh install using UEFI option to install Windows. Initially the PC would start up lighting fast (at the login screen in no more than 10 seconds, maybe less), but it has suddenly become very slow.

It's not the BIOS, as I get the Windows blue logo quite quickly after booting and then the screen moves on to a full plain light blue screen with the circular dot pattern going round and round. This can go on for perhaps 45-60 seconds, maybe more before the login screen finally appears. After that all is fine again.

I tried unplugging all non essential USB connectors but it has not helped. I tried disabling all non essential applications from the Task manager. No noticeable improvement. Where can I start tracking what might be causing Windows to take forever to boot?

Thanks!

:)

 

10 minutes to boot Windows 10

I upgraded my Dell Latitude 5540 from windows 7 to Windows 10. Everything seemed to go well. It now takes 10 minutes to boot my pc. The logo appears, then a black screen for a very long time, with little or no disk activity for 10 minutes, then it starts
disk access and I get to the login screen. After login operation seems ok. What could be causing such a slowww boot?

 

windows takes very long time to boot

Hi,

windows takes about 7 or 8 minutes to show up Welcome Screen. windows stays on this screen shown below for very long time. this used to happen with windows 8.1 and now even after clean install of windows 10. Kindly somebody from the technical team try to
help me fix this.

 

Have you tried turning off Fast Startup and giving it a few shutdowns?

 

I've similar problem as GregH, but much worse.

My laptop: Dell Inspiron N5110 with 2.50 gHz Intel Core i5-2450M processor, 500 GB HDD, 6 GB memory.
OS: Starting from OEM installed Windows 7 Pro (x64), my upgrades to Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 went smoothly with some minor hiccups and my system is now Windows 10 Pro (X64) upgrade to 1511 build 10586 installed on Apr 25, 2016.


Following MS hotfixes have been installed thereafter:
KB3116278 and KB3142588 on Apr 25
KB3140741, KB3147458 and KB 3154132 on Apr 29


Both MBAM and Windows Defender, updated till May 7, do not show any virus activity.


Problem:
After Dell welcome screen and then a blue screen with Windows icon lasting only 1-2 sec, another blue screen appears with those 6 marbles spinning in a circle! This screen lasts for about 100 minutes (yes, 1 hr. 40 min) and only then I get Windows logon screen. Thereafter, everything (at least those I use mostly) seems to work normally.


Windows 10 latest update is not a culprit as there was no such problem till about April 30, but I do not remember what else I did thereafter.


My observations:
Through msconfig, when I select "Diagnostic startup", booting takes only a few seconds though many services don't get launched. "ntbtlog.txt" shows BOOTLOG_NOT_LOADED for dxgkrnl.sys and WdFilter.sys. When trying "Selective startup" (default, and even if I select Normal startup, it goes back to default), ntbtlog.txt shows BOOTLOG_NOT_LOADED for dxgkrnl.sys (5 times, though once under BOOTLOG_LOADED), WdFilter.sys (twice), NDProxy.sys (4 times), and Condrv.sys (once).


Through EventViewer > Windows logs > System, I found that out of nearly 100 minutes' boot time, about 95 minutes were due to Error from source "Service Control Manager" (event ID 7023) appearing every 5 minutes and the event description showed "The Microsoft Passport Container service terminated with the following error: General access denied error".


The aforesaid display was interspersed with Warning event IDs 1, 28 and 414 and Error event IDs 7031, 10010 and 10016.


I tried to restore to the only earlier point of May 3, but the problem essentially remained the same.

If you have any suggestion, please spell it out step-by-step as I'm not very computer savvy.

 

Hello @amitg43 and welcome to Tenforums.
Usually, when you have a problem, it's a good idea to start your own thread, so as not to confuse things. So, I will ask you to do that. The error you describe has to do with permissions, and a reset will not fix that (I don't think).

In the meantime, have you tried creating a new, administrative-level user account?
User Account - Add in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

.

 

You might also try a clean boot, and see if you can identify the culprit that way.

 

I would try and boot into safe mode, could be a dodgy driver.
if it continues to still take a while to boot- i would suggest reseating your ram or it could be hardware.
if it boots up quickly I would look then look into what drivers/software were installed when you started noticing the issue.

Restart your PC. When you get to the sign-in screen, hold the Shift key down while you select Power

> Restart.

After your PC restarts to the Choose an option screen, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings >Restart.

After your PC restarts, you'll see a list of options. Select 4 or F4 to start your PC in Safe Mode. Or if you'll need to use the Internet, select 5 or F5 for Safe Mode with Networking.

 

The original OP here again. I will use some of the fault finding ideas that amitg43 has mentioned in trying to solve his problem, in particular EventViewer > Windows logs > System to view boot processing times. Mine is the exact same symptoms, just not 100 minutes thank goodness!

What I tried so far was to disable "Fastboot" (both MSI Fastboot and the other Windows option) in the BIOS. This seemed to work initially but the long delay was back again on subsequent start ups.
Next, I had recently updated my GPU drivers so I uninstalled these. Boot up was immediately fast, like I expect from Win 10. After installing the driver again (selected custom and clean install) but without the extra nVidia Experience and 3D drivers, just the main driver and PhysX Driver, back to the slow starts again.

What is unusual though is that every so often, the PC boots up much quicker. Usually faster on a restart also. But most boots take quite a while. BIOS posts quickly and handover to the OS shows the blue Windows logo on the screen for a few seconds. This is normally followed by the login screen but as mentioned in my initial post, I am getting the light blue screen with the "marbles going round and round (or sometimes a blank screen) for about 45-60 seconds before the login screen appears. After that everything is fine.

Frustrated as this is the most powerful PC I own, and also has become the slowest to start up by some significant margin.

 

I have seen this problem way too often, usually caused by SATA Controller driver.
If you have the latest one installed, try to remove it and use Windows driver instead.
Not to mention UEFI by itself, using Legacy support option might seem old, but works.

 

Re: suggestions from simrick

I am the only user and so have Administrator rights. Do you suggest creating another user with such rights?

As far as I can understand from the tutorial on clean boot, this is used if there is a problem in installing / uninstalling a program or in starting a program. As I said, after I am able to log in, I do not have any such problem. My problem is: how to bring down the long wait time before log in - it is of a very recent origin (may be from beginning of this month - so I would not normally suspect any old issues).

 

Hi, analysis:
Analyzing a Slow Boot with Windows Performance Recorder Helge Klein

Have a look at your Windows update history- what was updated around the time this slowdown occurred?

This may be of interest- but it would be sthg else if your problem preceded this. Unfortunately this doesn't explain 'when' the slowness occurs.. it rather sounds as if it's after login though. Maybe.

Microsoft has confirmed that one of the latest Windows 10 cumulative updates, KB3156421 specifically, is making some PCs really slow, and apparently this is a known issue.
Something that Redmond has known for a few weeks now, and has been trying to track down and fix.
This is the latest cumulative update that the software titan released for users running the November Update version of Windows 10. Microsoft is calling for users to share feedback about any bugs that they experience with this patch.
Microsoft engineer John Wink explained that this is because of a Cortana incompatibility:
“If you find that your PC is abnormally slow after installing the update, you may be seeing a problem that I’ve been trying to track down for a couple of weeks. Here’s something you can try to see if it alleviates the symptom. I’d love to hear the results of this test, and could really use your help in gathering additional information if indeed it rectifies the symptom for you. Please give this a shot and post your results to this thread. Thanks!”
A possible workaround for this slowdown is also out.
The simplest solution is to disable Cortana.
Not an ideal solution for those that regularly use or want to use or the personal assistant on their computer, but hopefully Microsoft nails the issue after feedback from users.
As of right now this seems to be the only bug caused by this update.
Fingers crossed, it stays that way.

 

KB3156421 got installed on May 13 whereas my problems started around start of May, so I'd not suspect it to be the source of slow down. In fact, after I get to the log on screen, the PC seems to behave normally. But trying to follow one earlier suggestion, I ran into fresh problems.

I tried to create a local account yesterday (May 14) with Administrator rights through settings > accounts and entered a new name and password. The computer went into a huddle with the circling marbles and nothing else happened even after 45 minutes. The screen would not close and I had to do it through Task Manager. I shut down the computer in frustration!

When I switched it on today, after the same long delay, I got the log on screen and a surprise: the bottom left corner showed the new local account name (that I tried to create yesterday) as Administrator. But my original Microsoft Account name was gone! I could then use the new intended password and get my desktop screen.

So I tried to repeat yesterday's steps, this time to create a Microsoft account as Administrator but I again got stuck with the output screen asking me to wait. It looks that the Administrator is finding it difficult to create a new account! Is this in keeping with the earlier reported system error message "The Microsoft Passport Container service terminated with the following error: General access denied error"? Btw, the internet connection was on throughout and I could access my mail, update programs, run anti-malware etc.

 

Apropos my last post, by allowing the system to take its own time, I was able to create a new local account with Administrator rights as also a Microsoft account with Administrator rights. No matter from which account I sign out, restart takes the same long time, but once I arrive at the log in screen, everything works normally. If something is amiss, I'm yet to find it.

Event Viewer log shows that whatever the system was trying to access during boot, it failed giving error message "The Microsoft Passport Container service terminated with the following error: General access denied error".

Now the interesting point. System tried to do this exactly 20 times at 5 minute intervals (during every start up) which obviously resulted in the 100 minute delay noted. I'm thankful that the programmers thought of putting a cap of 20 on the number of attempts, otherwise I'd be looking at those spinning marbles till the pc or I died!

I only wonder at the need for those attempts by system if, by giving up after 20 attempts, the pc can come to log-in screen and does not seem to suffer any handicap after that!

 

Strange.
IDK, but did you ever try disabling Cortana as Dalchina suggested?