[SOLVED] PC goes black for a long time inbetween bios screen and log-in in windows

[rexorbrave]

Hi All,

I don't exactly remember what started this problem, but it has been happening for a few weeks now (and it didn't do this before).

Whenever I turn on my pc it will first show the bios boot screen with the dots moving in the circle of windows indicating that its booting.
It will then show a black/greyish screen for approximately 1 minute and 15 seconds after which the login screen shows and I login.
This used to take only 5 seconds, so I wonder what can be the cause of this and if anyone knows what I can do to either figure out which program is taking so long at boot or what is causing the issue.

What I have tried so far:

• Reinstalling the GPU drivers
• Memtest (memory is clean)
• Updated the bios firmware
• Disabled all startup programs in the task manager
• Ran Avast Full scan, Avast Boot Scan, Malwarebytes full scan
• Disabled fast boot option

yet none of these resolved the issue.

About the pc:
Im quite a tech-savvy guy and built it last april (2020), it contains:

• GTX 1080
• AMD 3900x
• 2x16gb 3600 C16 ram
• TUF x570 gaming-plus motherboard
• 1tb nvme + 2tb ssd

Thanks in advance for anybody who is willing to help!

 

[Quanticriver]

can you perform a health check on the drive you have your OS on?

 

[rexorbrave]

can you perform a health check on the drive you have your OS on?

Running the error checking module in the drive properties tab returns that no errors were found

 

[Quanticriver]

Running the error checking module in the drive properties tab returns that no errors were found

can you make a hyren usb boot stick (any usb stick will do, it doesn't require much space)

instructions:

USB Booting | Hiren's BootCD PE

try booting from the stick and see if it still takes the pc that long?

also you could try to set "optimized defaults in the bios" this will reset your bios in case it's a bios setting that is giving you grief
NOTE, this will disable any OC or xmp / settings that you had configured in the bios

 

[rexorbrave]

can you make a hyren usb boot stick (any usb stick will do, it doesn't require much space)

instructions:

USB Booting | Hiren's BootCD PE

try booting from the stick and see if it still takes the pc that long?

also you could try to set "optimized defaults in the bios" this will reset your bios in case it's a bios setting that is giving you grief
NOTE, this will disable any OC or xmp / settings that you had configured in the bios

Hi!
I booted from the stick using Hyren. Although it took a bit to initialize before it started loading (20 sec I think, which I dont find strange since its a 10 year old usb) , once the loading dots showed up it only took 3 seconds to go from there to the desktop.

The bios was already reset when I updated the drivers. It didn't fix anything so I thereafter reenabled the xmp settings I had set

 

[Quanticriver]

Hi!
I booted from the stick using Hyren. Although it took a bit to initialize before it started loading (20 sec I think, which I dont find strange since its a 10 year old usb) , once the loading dots showed up it only took 3 seconds to go from there to the desktop.

The bios was already reset when I updated the drivers. It didn't fix anything so I thereafter reenabled the xmp settings I had set

so it boots faster from the stick, this means your regular boot drive is suspect, i'df do a win install on the other one, i'm geussing you have the nvme one as a boot drive, so i'd switch to the sata sdd for now, it should be much better

 

[rexorbrave]

so it boots faster from the stick, this means your regular boot drive is suspect, i'df do a win install on the other one, i'm geussing you have the nvme one as a boot drive, so i'd switch to the sata sdd for now, it should be much better

I assume that would resolve the issue, however, I think just reinstalling it on the nvme would also resolve it. I'd rather not reinstall windows at this point just yet though considering I have a lot of important files I wouldn't want to loose.

 

[Quanticriver]

I assume that would resolve the issue, however, I think just reinstalling it on the nvme would also resolve it. I'd rather not reinstall windows at this point just yet though considering I have a lot of important files I wouldn't want to loose.

then you have some data to move my friend, good luck

 

[rexorbrave]

then you have some data to move my friend, good luck

I did some trial and error and I am now quite sure that it is the NVIDIA Driver.

My analysis:

• I tried to reboot in safemode, takes less long
• Uninstalled nvidia drivers
• Reboot is instant, no black screen i can see the loading screen the entire time. It does however reinstall nvidia drivers before I am allowed to log in
• Boot into safemode, not uninstalling nvidia drivers
• Reboot and the black screen occurs again for approx 73 seconds.

My conclusion would be that it seems to be an issue related to the driver, ill do some more digging there

 

[rexorbrave]

For future me or others suffering the same problem:

The solution is in deleting the contents of AppData\Local\Temp

How I got to this solution:

• Install Windows ADK
• Run a boot trace in windows (explanation here)
• Open the boot trace and analyze the processor usage that matches the WinLogonInit
• This lead to a svchost file with a certain name. Unfortunately, besides being able to see that it had to do with loading the profile. The exact filepaths didn't show for me (like they normally should). Some googling lead me to this article, which happened to attempt to do the same as me but with succes. So I deleted the temp folder as suggested there and it resolved the issue.
• Boot times are back to being 3 seconds

Also big thanks to @Quanticriver for investing his time into this issue!