[SOLVED] Extremely Long Load Times on Windows 10 Welcome Screen

[Carl1237]

The problem:
Upon loading into windows 10 and reaching the sign in screen: I type in my password and sign in before getting a loading screen with rotating circle that says welcome. This loading screen takes anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour to load into windows. This has been going on for months. At first I assumed this was because my motherboard/CPU was dying, which was causing several other problems for my pc, but upon replacing my motherboard, RAM, and CPU with brand new ones the other problems were fixed but the long loading time persisted. Load times do seem to be somewhat affected by how long ago the last boot was, restarting and loading into windows a second time immediately after having just loaded into it seems to make it load faster on the second time.

What I'm using:
OS: 64-bit Windows 10 Home
Bios Version/Date: American Megatrends Inc. M.B0, 12/3/2020
Psu: EVGA 500W White
Gpu: Radeon RX 580 8GB
Hard drive: Seagate BarraCuda 2TB Internal Hard Drive HDD
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
RAM: TEAMGROUP Inc. 16GB (8GBx2) - 3000MHz C16 DDR4 SDRAM
MotherBoard: MSI B450-A PRO MAX
I don't know how relevant it is but I also have two 1TB external hard drives plugged in via USB.
All parts were purchased new within the past 1-2 years and have shown no other signs of issue.

What I've tried/Tests:
Before the new motherboard/CPU/RAM: 1 hour - 1h30m
First load after installing motherboard/CPU/RAM: 12 minutes
Typical load times after first: 1 hour-1h10m
Attempt to load into safe mode: 23 minutes
Restarting from safe mode into normal windows: 21 minutes

I've tried enabling/disabling fast startup several times but it doesn't seem to have much of any effect on load times.

 

[rocktalkrock]

Is this computer a prebuilt?
Have you checked the health of all your drives with CrystalDiskInfo?
Have you tried booting with the 2 external USB drives disconnected?
Have you tried resetting the CMOS?

 

[Carl1237]

Is this computer a prebuilt?
Have you checked the health of all your drives with CrystalDiskInfo?
Have you tried booting with the 2 external USB drives disconnected?
Have you tried resetting the CMOS?

I started with a prebuilt and replaced every single component with new ones over time until nothing was from the original.
I did try booting with the external drives disconnected it had seemingly no effect.
Considering I just replaced the motherboard entirely its probably nothing to do with the CMOS.

All that said, I was unaware of CrystalDiskInfo. After loading it up it has given me warnings that: 98 of my hard drives sectors have been reallocated, and that I have 100 under "current pending sector count" and "uncorrectable sector count".

https://imgur.com/a/jkmgeIk

 

[rocktalkrock]

I started with a prebuilt and replaced every single component with new ones over time until nothing was from the original.
I did try booting with the external drives disconnected it had seemingly no effect.
Considering I just replaced the motherboard entirely its probably nothing to do with the CMOS.

All that said, I was unaware of CrystalDiskInfo. After loading it up it has given me warnings that: 98 of my hard drives sectors have been reallocated, and that I have 100 under "current pending sector count" and "uncorrectable sector count".

https://imgur.com/a/jkmgeIk

What does it say for the Health Status of your drive, is it Yellow for Caution or Red for Bad?
If the drive has bad sectors Windows 10 may be corrupted.

 

[Carl1237]

What does it say for the Health Status of your drive, is it Yellow for Caution or Red for Bad?
If the drive has bad sectors Windows 10 may be corrupted.

Yellow for caution.

 

[Jmi20]

have you tried a fresh install of windows?

I always recommend people to upgrade their hard drives to ssd. The difference in performance and reliability is like night and day. Maybe you should consider.

 

[Carl1237]

have you tried a fresh install of windows?

I always recommend people to upgrade their hard drives to ssd. The difference in performance and reliability is like night and day. Maybe you should consider.

I dunno if that would help. I bought and installed a completely new windows 10 install when I replaced my hard drive about a year and a half ago. My gut tells me the hard drive is somehow responsible but its so new it just doesn't seem right.

 

[Jmi20]

I dunno if that would help. I bought and installed a completely new windows 10 install when I replaced my hard drive about a year and a half ago. My gut tells me the hard drive is somehow responsible but its so new it just doesn't seem right.

ive had new hard drives (usually wd) that failed within 3 months, maybe you just got unlucky. And since you have a few bad sectors it would confirm the hard drive failure, the load times alone would be a red flag. im guessing 5 minutes would be normal for a hard drive.

i cannot stress enough how massive a leap an ssd is in performance and reliability. It would make even a 15 year old pc feel more modern.

i also have an old laptop that i upgraded to an ssd about 8 years ago and after many drops, many reads and writes, and the storage being just about full, it still performs almost like a fresh install of windows

 

[Nemesia]

You changed the motherboard. You need to reinstall windows. Old chipset drivers are still in your OS.

I would buy a 256GB or 512GB SSD for your OS and you will never go back to an HDD for your boot drive ever again

 

[Endre]

Hello!
My advice (just like Nemesia said):
Buy an SSD and do a clean install of Windows!

 

[Nemesia]

Having an SSD for your OS is just amazing.

The OS boot in like 10 seconds. Programs opens faster.

When you get in your OS you don't have to wait 5 minutes for Windows to stop loading stuff. The moment you enter Windows it's ready to go and you can immediately start something.

You do that and you will ask yourself after why you still used an HDD for your boot drive. It's one of the best upgrade a system can get.

 

[Carl1237]

Only got a hard drive because I got a good deal for it at the time. I've already spent a lot of money on my last renovation but I'll look into a replacement for my hard drive, perhaps an SSD, if I can afford it. A 512GB wouldn't work though, I've already got over a terabyte of data on my hard drive filled up with games, software, and files. I could get rid off and move some stuff to the external drives to lower it below a terabyte, but anything more than that would be a hassle.

 

[Carl1237]

Actually after reading your comments more carefully maybe I could just use it for my OS. I hadn't considered doing that before.

 

[Carl1237]

So something strange occurred. One night I noticed my computer fans blowing at full speed for a few seconds like it does when it starts up. However this happened around 5-6 times over the course of around 20-30 minutes like it was in a boot loop. When I finally checked the computer it was open on the welcome screen and the fan blowing had stopped. After this happened my problem seems to have been fixed, my log in is instant now. I received a notification that read something like "Resolved issues with windows" or something like that after logging in. I have no idea what fixed it but I assume either windows finally activated some kind of repair tool or update which fixed whatever was happening before.

 

[Nemesia]

After a few boot loop Windows goes into repair and it probably fixed your issue there.

 

[Colif]

Have they bought an ssd yet?

One advantage to only having ssd for windows is if you need to wipe windows you don't lose everything else.
Provided you move the library locations - make destination folders before you start, makes it easier. Make sure to check destination folder isn't just an entire hdd - https://www.dummies.com/computers/o...e-the-location-of-user-folders-in-windows-10/

also boot speed is a big change. Everything loads and installs faster. Not just at boot, all the time.
last PC I had a 250gb ssd as boot drive and everything else on hdd
this PC the ssd is bigger and need for the hdd is less.