# Long boot time on Windows 10, need help diagnosing it.



## trparky (Oct 17, 2018)

If you look at my system specs in my profile you'd know that my system is no slouch so I can't see why my boot times are longer than they should be. It sits at the screen with the turning circling dots for twenty seconds, I can't help but to think that that's not right. I know that I can do a boot trace to find out why but I don't know how or what to look for once I have that boot trace.

By the way, after the boot process is complete the system is a rocket; fast as all hell. The only thing is the long boot time, or at least... what I perceive as a long boot time.


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## Durvelle27 (Oct 18, 2018)

Any programs at startup


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## Norton (Oct 18, 2018)

Check USB devices- a wonky USB device can slow down boot times


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## theFOoL (Oct 18, 2018)

20s is not slow. I've seen some as long as 3m. Unplug USB devices to see which one it is causing slow down. Check in BIOS and see if fast boot is the issue


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## Jetster (Oct 18, 2018)

You measure your boot time from button push to desktop. 9 out of ten times a slow boot is caused by  hardware not being properly recognized. Like a second hard drive with an old boot partition on it

So if you hooked up an old drive for extra space, try disconnecting it and see what your boot does


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## c12038 (Oct 18, 2018)

download and run a program called Autoruns to see what's starting up on your pc simple to use


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## kastriot (Oct 18, 2018)

Record your boot process on mobile and then play it @2x speed.


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## Vlada011 (Oct 18, 2018)

30-40 seconds for X99, X299 is normal boot.
Slow boot is 1 min+.

I never understand why people so much think and lose time to see why computer boot 30 or 35 seconds or 25 seconds.
My boot 30-35 seconds. Without any effort to improve boot speed in registry or software except disable programs I really don't need in task manager.
Most of time lose when Logo show up and than circle, that's 5-6 seconds lose of time.


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## bonehead123 (Oct 18, 2018)

Try using low cut boots instead of the long ones, hahahaha


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## trparky (Oct 18, 2018)

Well when some people brag about having 7 to 10 second boot times and you, yourself, aren't seeing it despite your high-end hardware you start to wonder why.

And no, I'm not talking about after you put in your password; I'm talking about the time between seeing your UEFI screen and the logon screen.


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## Salty_sandwich (Oct 18, 2018)

i had long boot issues being caused by secure boot or what ever its called, after messing around with hardware configs and fresh install, it was ok but started messing me about when i started messing around with different hardware configs and different o/s's


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## Joss (Oct 18, 2018)

As someone said above I'd start with Autoruns.


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## Bill_Bright (Oct 18, 2018)

I 7th the suggestion to look at your connected USB devices. And even though you have a SSD, I agree that 20 seconds is not that slow. 3 minutes would certainly be, even with a HD these days and with W10. 

How long does a reboot take?


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## Kursah (Oct 18, 2018)

Frankly, I'd check the Startup tab in Task Manager first, it should give you an idea of what's loading. I mean it's already there. If you have Task Manager in Less Details mode, just simply click the More Details at the bottom left window, then the startup tab. If that doesn't do what you need, maybe something like startups might be more useful.

When you say it sits there with the circling dots is this before or after login? I guess that is assuming you're running a password-ed profile. But I have found that Windows 10 is very fast to get to the login screen from reboot or shutdown, but depending on the profile can take more time to get to desktop from the login screen to load that profile, related services, data, programs, etc. But if you have no password (not recommended), and it skips to logging the default user in, then it's still the same issue but without a stop-gap of logging in first. 

You might also check the Event Logs for any system, program issues being reported or maybe a service delay or timeout that could be causing a problem. Also if your AV software decides to run a scan on system startup every time, that can cause issues too...I've seen some folks set this then wonder why their systems are so sluggish to load up from a cold boot or reboot. Though in the age of SSD's and more RAM, that shouldn't be quite as harsh on login. But enough things going on at the same time can still bog down the IO of the data path to an extent.


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## trparky (Oct 18, 2018)

Kursah said:


> When you say it sits there with the circling dots is this before or after login?


Before login, during the Windows boot animation. Am I being obsessive about having lightning fast boot times? Perhaps. But isn't that what we kind of expect from extremely high end hardware? I mean, you'd think that with the kind of hardware that many of us have it would result in a boot process that's goes from turning the system on to having the login screen in less than ten seconds.


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## Kursah (Oct 18, 2018)

trparky said:


> Before login, during the Windows boot animation. Am I being obsessive about having lightning fast boot times? Perhaps. But isn't that what we kind of expect from extremely high end hardware? I mean, you'd think that with the kind of hardware that many of us have it would result in a boot process that's goes from turning the system on to having the login screen in less than ten seconds.



Is this a fresh or migrated OS install? Is it fresh 10 or upgraded from 7/8? Are you in UEFI secure mode with fast boot enabled?


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## trparky (Oct 18, 2018)

It's a clean install of Windows 10 that was migrated from a SATA SSD to an NVMe SSD because I put the SATA SSD into another system of mine. Yes, it's in UEFI boot mode.


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## neatfeatguy (Oct 18, 2018)

trparky said:


> It's a clean install of Windows 10 that was migrated from a SATA SSD to an NVMe SSD because I put the SATA SSD into another system of mine. Yes, it's in UEFI boot mode.



Win 7 on SSD takes around 30 seconds or so to boot for me. Lots of programs load at startup, too. 

My HTPC is on Win 10 with a 4TB 5400 WD Red and takes a good minute or so. Virtually no programs load at startup - Plex, MSI Afterburner and maybe one other lightweight program.

If Windows hasn't done all the updates or caching or whatever the hell it does on a new install, the boot times can sometimes feel a bit longer than usual for a while, if I remember correctly. At least, that was the case with my work computer. Clean Win 10 install on a WD Blue 7200 drive. I don't restart the computer all that often, but it took a good handful of reboots over a few weeks before the system would  boost faster past the Windows loading screen. 

At home, I usually power on the computer and then take the dog out or get the mail....I find something to occupy that 30ish seconds I'd otherwise be wasting by sitting at the computer, waiting for it to load into Windows. Once I get back to the computer a couple minutes later, she's ready to go. If you're just sitting and waiting, it can feel like a lot longer than it really is. Try to occupy your time for that 20+ seconds you're waiting for the computer to boot.


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## phill (Oct 18, 2018)

Everyone has already said to go check the startup and I'd be headed right there as well..

The only extra place you could check is in the bios and see if there's a timer on the boot up for the SATA devices. On some motherboards I have here, there's a delay timer in the bios that you can set from 0 seconds to I think a minute?  But it's just something to double check just in case 

Also do you have many icons on your desktop?  That can slow things up a little....


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 18, 2018)

Slow boot ups can be attributed to USB items such as external hard drives/thumb drives, faoling drive in system whether hdd, ssd or odd. Even too many services/startup items.


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## trparky (Oct 18, 2018)

Here is a listing of stuff that's at startup and services.


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## phill (Oct 18, 2018)

trparky said:


> Here is a listing of stuff that's at startup and services.



From a very quick look at that, there about 10 things you could shut off but one thing I will ask, are you still using Defender as well as Avast??  That could be a bit of a problem right there if you are.. 
When you have booted into Windows, without loading anything up, how much of you ram is used by the OS and programs that have been up with it?  (More out of interest than anything else...)  

The services look masses but Windows 10 does tend to add a royal shed load...


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## trparky (Oct 19, 2018)

OK, so I did some experimentation. I have an external Western Digital MyBook that's connected via USB 3.0 and an external BluRay drive that's connected via a sort of janky USB-to-SATA adapter. I disconnected both storage devices from USB and booted the system, that boot time was about 13 seconds (plus or minus a second due to me having to time it on my iPhone). I reconnected the external BluRay drive with the USB-to-SATA adapter and reran the test, again it was 13 or so seconds. I then reconnected the Western Digital drive and that's when the boot time took a shit and reached into the 35 second range. For whatever reason the Western Digital MyBook external hard drive is presenting itself as a major roadblock to booting the system and I have no idea why.

Any theories? Anything that I should maybe look for in my Gigabyte UEFI so as to prevent the MyBook drive from being such a boat anchor during boot?


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## theFOoL (Oct 19, 2018)

Easy fix is to not have it connected via boot. Also the CD Drive could be causing the issue to


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## newtekie1 (Oct 19, 2018)

trparky said:


> Any theories? Anything that I should maybe look for in my Gigabyte UEFI so as to prevent the MyBook drive from being such a boat anchor during boot?



There is no way around that from my experience. Windows initializes all the storage drives during the initial boot phase, reading the basic information from them to assign drive letters and determine size and free space.


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## Athlonite (Oct 19, 2018)

after looking at that start up txt there's only two things you need leave on Avast and Realtek everything else you can load when you need it 

USB Devices for some reason take a long time to initialize and will slow the boot sequence considerably my WD 2TB Elements USB2.0 HDD slows my machine down to a 45+ second boot time if it's plugged in during boot so now I only reboot or cold boot once a week otherwise it's just power off Sleep mode which takes about 5 secs to come back from sleep to usable


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## Jetster (Oct 19, 2018)

Yes, remove everything from the drive. Do a full format and try it again with noting on it
Or just don't turn it off


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## aQi (Oct 19, 2018)

Have to looked for the bios update ?

May be a driver is taking longer then usual time to load. Perhaps a driver update but which one ?


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## Vlada011 (Oct 19, 2018)

Depend a lot from BIOS, if you want to check everything and properly boot, 
pass all Q Codes need some time 20 seconds at least, than Windows to boot and you have 30-35 seconds normally.


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## Jetster (Oct 19, 2018)

He figured it out. It's his WD MyBook drive


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## Voluman (Oct 19, 2018)

Can you set the hard drive inizialization time? Older motherboards have that option, i used to set 10 sec, its more than enough, while the def time was around 25-30 sec. Or maybe usb inizialization time?
Btw, win 10 load so long? ( I have 13-15 sec from pushing power on button till i get to desktop and its usable, but win8.1 )


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## newtekie1 (Oct 19, 2018)

I amazes me all the people that either didn't read the OP's problem or outright don't understand how Windows boot process works. 

Removing programs from startup will not make the section of the Windows boot sequence the OP is having an issue with, the spinning balls, load any faster. Nothing in the startup folder or the startup section of autoruns/msconfig/task manager is loaded during that phase of the Windows boot sequence. Everything in the Startup folder/autoruns/msconfig/task manager is loaded after the login screen.


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## theFOoL (Oct 19, 2018)

As I stated this is more likely a hardware issue. That said, he needs to unplug each USB to find what is causing the problem. To my knowledge it's probably that USB HDD from Western Digital causing the problem


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## John Naylor (Oct 19, 2018)

neatfeatguy said:


> Win 7 on SSD takes around 30 seconds or so to boot for me. Lots of programs load at startup, too.



Immediately after build, (2 Samsung Pro SSDs, 2 Segate SSHDs and 1 HD each with a bootable Win7 OS selectable from BIOS), Boot times , button push to password screen, was:

15.6 seconds on SSD
16.5 seconds on SSHD
21.2 seconds on HD.

Note that the boot time can be greatly affected by AV programs which scan the boot sector and other areas before allowing boot process to begin



> My HTPC is on Win 10 with a 4TB 5400 WD Red and takes a good minute or so. Virtually no programs load at startup - Plex, MSI Afterburner and maybe one other lightweight program.



5400 rpm drives are not known for their speed



> At home, I usually power on the computer and then take the dog out or get the mail....I find something to occupy that 30ish seconds I'd otherwise be wasting by sitting at the computer, waiting for it to load into Windows. Once I get back to the computer a couple minutes later, she's ready to go. If you're just sitting and waiting, it can feel like a lot longer than it really is. Try to occupy your time for that 20+ seconds you're waiting for the computer to boot.



Yes ... this is what most people do .... listen to voice mail, check their in box, grab a cupa cawfee, unplug their headphones, wipe snack crumbs off mouse pad, use a screen wipe.   Which kinda makes all the fuss about boot and loading speed "much ado about nothing"


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## trparky (Oct 19, 2018)

rk3066 said:


> As I stated this is more likely a hardware issue. That said, he needs to unplug each USB to find what is causing the problem. To my knowledge it's probably that USB HDD from Western Digital causing the problem


That's exactly what it was, the Western Digital drive being the boat anchor during boot.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 19, 2018)

Athlonite said:


> after looking at that start up txt there's only two things you need leave on Avast and Realtek everything else you can load when you need it
> 
> USB Devices for some reason take a long time to initialize and will slow the boot sequence considerably my WD 2TB Elements USB2.0 HDD slows my machine down to a 45+ second boot time if it's plugged in during boot so now I only reboot or cold boot once a week otherwise it's just power off Sleep mode which takes about 5 secs to come back from sleep to usable



If the system has Legacy boot, turn those on.


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## Aquinus (Oct 19, 2018)

trparky said:


> OK, so I did some experimentation. I have an external Western Digital MyBook that's connected via USB 3.0 and an external BluRay drive that's connected via a sort of janky USB-to-SATA adapter. I disconnected both storage devices from USB and booted the system, that boot time was about 13 seconds (plus or minus a second due to me having to time it on my iPhone). I reconnected the external BluRay drive with the USB-to-SATA adapter and reran the test, again it was 13 or so seconds. I then reconnected the Western Digital drive and that's when the boot time took a shit and reached into the 35 second range. For whatever reason the Western Digital MyBook external hard drive is presenting itself as a major roadblock to booting the system and I have no idea why.
> 
> Any theories? Anything that I should maybe look for in my Gigabyte UEFI so as to prevent the MyBook drive from being such a boat anchor during boot?


The problem is that when it goes to detect it, the drive has to spin up and these drives take time to spin up. I have both a 4TB and 8TB WD external drives and they both are a drag on my boot time. If I only had the SATA and NVMe SSDs, it would boot plenty fast but, the rotational media drives are the ones that harm boot time. I've honestly had the same problem and the only real solution would be to move mass storage to another machine and access it via your home network. The sad reality is that as long as the drives are connected to your machine, at some point in the boot process the drive will need to spin up. On my machine it can either happen when UEFI starts up or when the OS does. One way or another, it's going to happen.


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