Sudden significantly slow boot times on restart

KZKZ4242

New Member
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I was hoping to get some advice on how to diagnose the issue I'm having.
This is on a PC I built exactly 1 year ago. Windows 8.1
Build:
· Intel Core i5-4670K @ 3.4GHz
· Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
· ASUS Maximus VI Hero LGA 1150 Intel Z87 ATX
· Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600
· Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB SSD (Primary)
· WD Black Series 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s (Storage)
· GPU: ASUS NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770
· PSU: SeaSonic 650-Watt 80+ Gold ATX Active SSR-650RM
· Wireless Adapter: TP-Link TL-WDN4800 Dual Band Wireless N900 PCI Express Adapter

Up until very recently, the PC would boot very quickly. 7-10 seconds between power on to desktop screen. A few seconds of ASUS splash screen, then Windows icon loading screen flashes by, auto sign in, into desktop. Usually in the Windows screen goes by so fast the loading dots don’t even show.

Now at the Windows screen it stalls for 60+ seconds. This happens on every reboot.
However, sometimes (not always) if system is shut down completely, then turned on, the speed goes back to normal (7-10 sec). This is not consistently reproducible and is driving me insane because nothing had changed.

It's a very noticeable difference from before and did not happen gradually. The OS itself works fine.

Some possible causes that I can think of:

1) I was transferring some downloaded movie files from the PC to an external hard drive that I also use for File History backups. I may have restarted the PC without ejecting the external hard drive. Maybe this caused a mix-up with the boot drives? I checked in the BIOS but it still says primary boot drive as the SSD, with or without the external drive plugged in.

2) Internet Connectivity. The wireless pci adapter I use has slowed very slightly when connecting to Wi-Fi on startup. Under device manager -> Network Adapters there are around 100 items named "TAP-Win32 Adapter OAS #(1-100)" with a warning symbol in the icon. I have no idea what these all are but I'm worried it is not working correctly.
Screenshot (3).pngScreenshot (4).png
This may be a different issue altogether but any help would be very much appreciated.

3) Possibly a virus or malware problem from using torrent programs recently. But I have scanned with Avast and Malwarebytes numerous times in the past few days with no problems found.


Things I’ve tried that haven't worked:
1) Made sure to update windows, update graphics drivers, update SSD firmware.
2) Tried a system restore to a week ago. No change in speed.
3) Tried disabling Avast (and uninstall) before rebooting. No change.
4) Disabled all startup programs. No change.
5) Performed a CHKDSK on my secondary storage drive (WD Black 1TB). Found no bad sectors/clusters, no problems found.
Have not performed a CHKDSK on primary drive (SSD). But I did run a boot time scan with Avast and it found no problems.​
6) Tried rebooting with secondary drive disconnected. No change.
7) Tried THIS procedure
Was able to run boot tracing. File created in C:/TEMP is shown HERE
Screenshot (2).png
Cannot do the analyses of the boot trace. The command:
xperf /tti -i boot_BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER_1.etl -o summary_boot.xml -a boot
Results in THIS "xperf: error: boot_BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER_1.etl: The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002).
Screenshot (5).jpg
Not sure how to proceed…

8) Most recently, tried to boot Windows into Safe Mode. With Safe boot “Minimal” the startup miraculously worked perfectly. Quick Windows loading screen, no 60+ sec delay. I was able to run Malwarebytes in Safe Mode and found 1 file which was quarantined and deleted. Rebooted the PC back in Normal Startup, still has the loading screen delay.
Safe Mode is the most consistent solution I’ve found so hopefully this can help with diagnosing the problem.

There seem to be many different solutions online to slow startup problems. I’m hoping for guidance on what else I can do to try and figure out what the problem is. I'm afraid to try anymore random solutions on other Windows help forums.

Any help would be much appreciated!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel Core i5-4670K @ 3.4Ghz
    Motherboard
    ASUS Maximus Hero VI LGA 1150 Intel Z87 ATX
    Memory
    Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB SSD (Primary)
    WD Black Series 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s (Storage)
    PSU
    SeaSonic 650-Watt 80+ Gold ATX SSR-650RM
    Case
    Fractal Design Define R4
    Cooling
    Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
    Keyboard
    Corsair Vengeance K65
    Mouse
    Razer Mamba
    Browser
    Google Chrome
    Antivirus
    Avast Free Antivirus
I know this post is a bit old, but just in case you haven't figured it out yet, do you happen to have a Corsair k65 or k70 keyboard?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1
I have a K65.

I managed to solve the problem by uninstalling all the excess network adapters named "TAP-Win32 Adapter OAS #(1-100)" Had to do this a few times because they kept reinstalling themselves... not sure why, but once I got rid of them my PC booted up at the original speed. No problems since.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    Intel Core i5-4670K @ 3.4Ghz
    Motherboard
    ASUS Maximus Hero VI LGA 1150 Intel Z87 ATX
    Memory
    Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB SSD (Primary)
    WD Black Series 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s (Storage)
    PSU
    SeaSonic 650-Watt 80+ Gold ATX SSR-650RM
    Case
    Fractal Design Define R4
    Cooling
    Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
    Keyboard
    Corsair Vengeance K65
    Mouse
    Razer Mamba
    Browser
    Google Chrome
    Antivirus
    Avast Free Antivirus
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