Windows 10: Windows "randomly" spending WAY too long on Welcome screen. Pls help!

Hi everyone.

I had this PC for the longest time, and everything seemed fine until a couple months ago I started having this issue, which I hope you may be able to help me with.
The thing is, in what appears to be random fashion, Windows takes an unacceptably variable amount of time in the Welcome screen on each startup.

The usual time spent on this screen is some 6 seconds (2 full cycles of the twirling dots animation). Now, the thing is, if you constantly reboot the PC, without changing anything, the time spent on that screen will vary, apparently at random, between the usual 6 seconds it used to take, up to THIRTY seconds. This variation, needless to say, makes it an even bigger pain to troubleshoot.

Other than that startup delay, performance seems fine in every other scenario, even gaming, both in 3D performance and load times.

Another thing to note is that it only happens on boot. Logging off and back on takes the expected time, so contrarily to what it would seem, it doesn't seem to be related to the logon itself.

Stuff I've tried:
- Reset of RAM to default 2133 MHz (normally running 3200)
- Resetting BIOS to defaults
- Reflashing BIOS to version prior to when the issue started
- Clean install of Windows
- Clean install of release version of Windows (I'm normally on Insider Fast)
- Installing Windows to either hard drive and NVMe SSD
- Creating a second Windows user
- Removing all unneeded peripherals
- Disabling SATA controller, leaving only NVMe storage
- Switching to Performance power profile
- SFC /scannow
- Disabling Hibernation (and therefore Fast Start)
- Disabling everything in startup using Autoruns (while it does increase the chance of getting lower times, I don't consider the results to be conclusive at all)
- Currently I'm unable to test Safe mode since it GSODs in the Windows build I'm in but IIRC it improved load times a lot too, not sure if it would ever take longer than those intended 6 seconds

The PC:
- Ryzen 5 3600
- ASUS Prime B350 PLUS
- 2x8 GB G.Skill FlareX 3200
- AData 8200SX NVME 1 TB SSD
- 4 TB SATA 3.0 HDD
- RTX 2070
- Thermaltake TR2 600W PSU
- Windows 10 build 19577

Latest BIOS and drivers on everything.
No overclock other than RAM at 3200 using XMP.

I have dedicated more time to this issue than I'd like to admit and it's driving me insane.
The only thing I could think of right now would be swapping the mobo or PSU, but that's just a stupid desperation move, which would probably accomplish nothing.

I'll greatly appreciate if anyone could provide me with any pointers as to what could be going on here.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Setting HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\VerboseStatus to 1, the message that sticks there forever is "Preparing Windows". Any ideas?

:)

 

i update bios then black screen ???? pls help me 980ti

@smoka Great you fixed it and would be interesting to know how you did it. Care to list the basic steps you took to do it so that it can help others stuck in the same situation?

 

Windows 10 freezes randomly

I had already tried turning off fast startup, to no avail.
Will look at the list you provided, thanks. Hard to do when computer freezes on the Windows loading screen though. *Biggrin

I had tried that as well... no result.

 

Best way to spend $300?

+1 that sounds like a good way to spend the money