Windows 10 takes long time to start from login screen
*Original Title: Log in
I upgraded my system to Windows 10 today. When I log in, it takes a long time to start . The small image goes round and round for a long time and after entering the password also it takes a long time to show the screen. Please advice how to correct this situation.
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This can be normal for the first few boots after the upgrade depending on what you mean by long time. Did you actually get to the Welcome Page to setup up windows 10 with your info? Is everything working OK after the boot? You should post more info— Model computer, previous windows version, any error messages. FYI you have 30 days to return to windows 7 or 8,1. Go to Settings, Update and Recovery, select the option to go back to windows 7 or 8.1. This doesn’t always work so make sure you have good backups.
Check with your computer maker to see if your model is approved for upgrading. If it is not approved, it is best to return to your previous windows. Get windows 10 when you replace the computer. Not approved means there are no customized win 10 drivers for your model and you will not be happy with the performance of the generic drivers. This is especially true of older windows 7 laptops.
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Windows 8 takes extremely long time to reboot
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Welcome to the Microsoft Community.
It is possible that a driver is causing the system to restart slowly. However its not
possible to exactly determine which driver is causing the issue. It could also be software that slows down restart time.
Have any changes been made to the computer prior to this issue occuring?
You can try these methods to check if the issue gets resolved
Method 1:Run the System Maintenance troubleshooter
a)Press the ‘Windows + C’ to activate the charms menu or move the mouse pointer to bottom
right corner of the screen and you will get the charms menu.
b)Click on ‘search’ and select ‘settings’ and type ‘Troubleshooting’ and select ‘Troubleshooting’.
c)On the left pane click «View All» and then click «System Maintenance» and run the troubleshooter.
Method 2:
Step 1:Check if the system takes time to start in Safe Mode
Follow the steps on this link to start your system in safe mode and check if the start up time is less.
Step 2:Check if the issue exists in clean boot start up.
Follow the steps here to troubleshoot the issue. There could be a program that takes time to load and this slows down the system.
Note: Once troubleshooting is done please follow «Step 3 :Reset the computer to
start as usual» on the article to boot the computer in normal mode.
Please get back to us if you have any other queries.
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Following the Step 2 in Method 2 above, I’ve found 3 candidates that may cause the restart problem. They are: NVIDIA Display Driver Service, NVIDIA Update Service Daemon, and NVIDIA Stereoscopic 3D Driver Service. When they are excluded(unchecked) restarting Windows takes about 3-4 mins. (Of course, this is pretty long, too. But when they are included restarting takes about 30 mins or more) Because restart testing takes too long time I didn’t go further than that, so don’t know what service among the three is the exact cause of the problem. But, it seems pretty obvious that the problem is releated to graphics chipset driver. My laptop’s graphics chipset is GeForce GT 555m. I wish you have any helpful idea about this. Thank you.
P.S. In my case, restarting Windows takes longer(much longer :-p) time than newly starting Windows after turning off(Of course, Fast Start Up option is activated). Is it normal, i.e., is it intended so?(restart time > newly start time with FSU option) Or just problem of my laptop?
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There are Windows 8 drivers available for the Nvidia GT 555M.
Please uninstall all the old drivers from Control Panel and Device Manager.
To uninstall drivers from Device Manager
a)Press the «Windows key + R» and type «devmgmt.msc» and hit enter.
b)Expand «Display adapters» and right click the drivers and uninstall them.
Please note the system type (32 or 64 bit) and download and install the drivers.
A number of factors determine boot time. Amount of RAM, frequency of the RAM, type of hard disk (SSDs boot faster),number of start up items, etc.
Restarting Windows 8 does take longer that a complete shutdown and restart with Fast Startup enabled.
Fast startup is a setting that helps your PC start up faster after shutdown.
Windows does this by saving system info to a file upon shutdown.
When you start your PC again, Windows uses that system info to resume your PC instead of restarting it.
Note:The fast startup setting doesn’t apply to Restart.
You need to shut down and then start your PC again for fast startup to take effect.
Fast startup is turned on by default in Windows.
Let us know what happens.
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My boot time is a few seconds, and I have an NVidia 630 graphics card with two video storage. Perhaps you need a driver update for your graphics card.
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Fast Startup is the problem. Startup is quick, though not spectacular with fast startup disabled. It can take from ten to thirty minutes with fast startup enabled. I am presently using the obvious solution of just not using fast startup. Hopefully, Microsoft will eventually get a fix out for this problem. (I have updated to 8.1, and that had no impact other then re-enabling fast startup with the same problem, so I have again disabled it.
Whoops! Problem returned. Nothing seemed to help, so I disabled all ‘load on boot’ items except for security and a few obviously necessary programs such as microsoft. (Most just pre-install so they will execute faster on first use and will not even take significantly longer to just execute on first use. (HP)). Everything is now fine, perhaps spectacular. Boot is under 25 seconds as opposed to five minutes before I started this odyssey. In the future I will check boot time after installing anything and uninstall ANY program that malwares by negatively messing needlessly with the boot sequence without my permission. ALL programs should ask and explain before modifying the boot sequence.
Just a note; some security programs don’t do a full uninstall, leaving ‘residue’ in the boot which can slow down not only boot time, but scan times. Using a smart uninstaller to clean this up really helped my machine and not just boot time. It has also affected my opinion of some big name security providers (K). If I uninstall them, what are they still reporting?
Why windows takes so long to start up.
Most of us have had a brand new computer at one time. It’s a great feeling. You boot up windows and within 30 seconds you are surfing the net, checking your email, or playing your favorite game. 10 months down the road things aren’t so nice anymore. You power up your computer and it seems to take forever to load.
Even when you are careful about what you install it seems that each day it takes longer for it to boot. It’s not your imagination – and there are a couple of good tips to keep your boot time short and sweet.
As always – backup your system before you start any of this. If you make a mistake you might need to restore from backup
Update (09/08/2006) – There has been some controversy about the prefetch folder. I think this issue needs to be looked into. I did have a reputable source for this information: It was the “Windows XP Annoyances” book by O’Reilly. Page 210. Titled “Keeping an eye on prefetch”
1. The prefetch cache
The first tip I want to talk about is the windows prefetch. Windows XP has this feature that loads commonly used programs – at boot time.
Here is how it works: Yesterday you used MS Word, and Duke Nukem 3D. Today you boot your system to check e-mail. It sees parts of these two programs in the prefetch folder and loads them into memory before windows completes the boot process. The benefit is faster application launch times. If you really wanted to use MS Word, it would pop up really quick when you double clicked on it.
The problem is most people have been running windows for years, and the prefetch gets clogged with stuff that you almost never use. Windows takes forever to boot because it is prefetching a 1.0 copy of Napster, and you just want to check your email before you have to go to work.
What can be done about it? Well there are a few things we can do to tweak the prefetch cache. One method is to disable it partially, and this can be done quite easily.
Simply browse to the windows folder (Ex: C:\Windows) and under there you should see the prefetch folder. Go into the prefetch folder and delete all the files (Careful! It should look like this c:\windows\prefetch) And here is a screenshot of one if you still have questions
The first thing to note is the next reboot will be slow. This is because windows needs to relearn the prefetch for system files. Subsequent boots will run much faster since the sludge of programs has been removed, and only new ones are in the cache.
The trouble is that it will only help you for a while – until the prefetch gets clogged up again. We need to edit a registry key to tweak it. Open regedit and browse to this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Under this key you should see a value named: EnablePrefetcher
It has 4 possible values:
0 – Disabled : The prefetch system is turned off.
1 – Application : The prefetch only caches applications.
2 – Boot : The prefetch only caches boot system files.
3 – All : The prefetch caches boot, and application files.
We don’t want to disable it entirely. This would actually make boot times *longer*. This is because this feature is also used to speed up the loading of boot files. That is why we are going to pick the number 2 option. It allows us to keep the advantage of caching system files, without continually clogging the system up with applications.
Set the value to 2 and reboot.
The 2nd time you boot it should boot much faster. Remember that the side effect is that launching individual applications once windows has loaded will now be slightly slower.
2. Hard drive fragmentation
Over time your hard drive will become fragmented. An over simplified explanation of fragmentation is when your files and folders are not all stored in the same spot. For example lets say you had a large movie file. If it were fragmented the first 5 megabytes are at the beginning of the hard drive, and then next 5 are at the end. It takes longer for windows to read the file than it would if it were all in the same spot. The point is that if each file is stored in a linear fashion, and the drive does not have to move all over the place to read it – it will load faster. XP has a built-in defrag tool, and it is simple to run. Open “My Computer” right click on the boot drive, and go to properties. Now click on the tools tab.
Click “Defragment Now” and the following window should appear:
Before you click on the “Defragment” button you want to close all applications and be aware that it might take hours to complete. If you leave something running it might keep windows from completing the defragment operation.
Click on the defragment button and you can walk away. Or you can watch it defrag your hard drive:
3. Disconnected network drives
I am using networked drives all the time. If you have ever put your machine on a network and connected to a shared drive, this can slow you down too. If you have a drive that is still mapped, but cannot be reached it will slow down windows during boot time. This is because windows will wait…wait…and wait some more for the remote server to respond. To clean these out open “My Computer” and go to the tools menu. Click on “Disconnect Network Drives” It will open a window that looks like this:
Click on the drives you no longer need, and click OK.
4. Spyware & Adware
These can have a big impact on your start times. If your PC gets loaded with spyware, it spends a large portion of its boot time making sure those pesky programs are loaded and ready to throw popup adverts at you all day. To check and clean your system of spyware there are three free programs that I highly recommend:
5. File and Printer Sharing
One other item that can significantly impact is the “File and Printer Sharing” feature within windows. Obviously, if you are sharing your printer, or folders you don’t want to disable this – so this tip is not for you. If you never use it, then why waste your time waiting for it to load?
Here is how to turn it off:
Go into the control panel. Click on “Network Connections”
Now right click on “Local Area Connection” and click on properties
Uncheck the “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks”
Click OK, and reboot.
That wraps up our windows startup optimization. And if you are tired of waiting for windows to shutdown, then check out our article on speeding that up too!
Stay tuned. We are about to release a new version of our Remote Reboot program. This version adds a feature suggested by David in our forum. It allows you to specify the shutdown reason that is written to the event log on Windows XP, and 2003. If you are not sure what I am talking about…this should remind you:
One final note, if you have any ideas for a free utility you would like to see, please post to our forum…or better yet check out the ones we already have
One more thing…Subscribe to my newsletter and get 11 free network administrator tools, plus a 30 page user guide so you can get the most out of them. Click Here to get your free tools
