Question PC Suddenly Takes More Than 10 Minutes to Boot

[Balderdash999]

I'm posting here because my desktop, which used to finish booting in under a minute, has suddenly started hanging during the boot process. It will display the ASUS logo with the prompt to press a button to enter BIOS, then the screen will go black and the power button on the case will blink for about 5 minutes. After this, the ASUS logo reappears and hangs for 5 minutes before it finally boots to Windows. As far as I can tell, everything works fine once it finally boots, but i cant figure out why it suddenly started doing this. My system currently includes the following:

ASUS ROG Strix B550-F (BIOS version 1202
x64
Nvidia 3070Ti
500GB Nvme (boot drive-Western Digital
Black SN 750)
4 TB Nvme (Western Digital Black SN850X)
Ryzen 7 3700x 8 core processor
16 GB DDR4 RAM
Windows 10 64 bit
Corsair RM 750 750W ATX 12V v2.52
modular psu (4 years old)


I've had this computer since I built it about 4 years ago, and I replaced the Video Card about a year ago and upgraded the secondary drive from a standard ssd to a 4TB Nvme 6 months ago. There is no RAID system in place.

I tried removing and replacing the CMOS battery, running chkdsk to verify drive integrity (no problems) scanning for missing or damaged Windows files (some were found and fixed), updating Windows, and diabling fast boot, then reenabling it after a boot attempt, but the problem persists. There are no peripherals plugged in besides my mouse and keyboard on boot.

Does anyone know why this might be happening? I'd really appreciate any help.

 

[Lutfij]

ASUS ROG Strix B550-F
What BIOS version are you on for your motherboard?

500GB Nvme (boot drive)
4 TB Nvme
You've mentioned their capacities, what is the make and model of the drives?

You forgot to mention the make and model of your PSU and it's age.

 

[Balderdash999]

ASUS ROG Strix B550-F
What BIOS version are you on for your motherboard?

500GB Nvme (boot drive)
4 TB Nvme
You've mentioned their capacities, what is the make and model of the drives?

You forgot to mention the make and model of your PSU and it's age.

Ah, sorry, I've edited my original post to contain the missing info.

 

[Bob.B]

I'm posting here because my desktop, which used to finish booting in under a minute, has suddenly started hanging during the boot process. It will display the ASUS logo with the prompt to press a button to enter BIOS, then the screen will go black and the power button on the case will blink for about 5 minutes. After this, the ASUS logo reappears and hangs for 5 minutes before it finally boots to Windows. As far as I can tell, everything works fine once it finally boots, but i cant figure out why it suddenly started doing this. My system currently includes the following:

ASUS ROG Strix B550-F (BIOS version 1202
x64
Nvidia 3070Ti
500GB Nvme (boot drive-Western Digital
Black SN 750)
4 TB Nvme (Samsung 990 Pro)
Ryzen 7 3700x 8 core processor
16 GB DDR4 RAM
Windows 10 64 bit
Corsair RM 750 750W ATX 12V v2.52
modular psu (4 years old)


I've had this computer since I built it about 4 years ago, and I replaced the Video Card about a year ago and upgraded the secondary drive from a standard ssd to a 4TB Nvme 6 months ago. There is no RAID system in place.

I tried removing and replacing the CMOS battery, running chkdsk to verify drive integrity (no problems) scanning for missing or damaged Windows files (some were found and fixed), updating Windows, and diabling fast boot, then reenabling it after a boot attempt, but the problem persists. There are no peripherals plugged in besides my mouse and keyboard on boot.

Does anyone know why this might be happening? I'd really appreciate any help.

Your bios is quite old you might want to update that and also the chipset driver if it's old.

Post a screenshot from.....crystal disk info.....for each disk.

 

[Balderdash999]

Your bios is quite old you might want to update that and also the chipset driver if it's old.

Post a screenshot from.....crystal disk info.....for each disk.

I was wrong - I thought I had installed a Samsung, but it was a WD Black SN850X, so I've updated that info in the post above. I've updated the BIOS to the most recent version (3611) for my Mobo, and I installed the latest chipset drivers, but the issue still persists. I don't have an account on another site to post pictures for CrystalDiskInfo, but I did run it for both drives, and both came up with a health status rating of "Good" (100%) with 0 critical warnings.

 

[Balderdash999]

I just noticed that when I first turn it on, the lights for "DRAM, CPU, VGA," and "Boot"light up briefly in that order on the motherboard. Is this normal?

 

[Bob.B]

I was wrong - I thought I had installed a Samsung, but it was a WD Black SN850X, so I've updated that info in the post above. I've updated the BIOS to the most recent version (3611) for my Mobo, and I installed the latest chipset drivers, but the issue still persists. I don't have an account on another site to post pictures for CrystalDiskInfo, but I did run it for both drives, and both came up with a health status rating of "Good" (100%) with 0 critical warnings.

Did you clear the cmos after the bios update?

Task manager/perf/startup what does bios time show?

 

[Balderdash999]

Did you clear the cmos after the bios update?

Task manager/perf/startup what does bios time show?

Bios time under Task manager/perf/startup was 7.7 seconds (I'm not sure what that means). I didn't trying clearing CMOS yet, but I think I might have fixed it this morning:

I noticed my C drive had become full of about 1.3 million tiny 2 kb files that had titles consisting of "fba_ads," then a string of numbers that ended in the .JSON extension. According to timestamps, these had started appearing right when this problem started. After some research, I found that these files were somehow being generated by Facebook Metaquest (I had an Oculus Rift S for this system), so I deleted them all and uninstalled Metaquest. I've only booted it once since doing that (there were so many of these filed it took almost 2 hours just to send them to the Recycle Bin), but it finished booting in under 30 seconds like it used to.


I'm hoping this was the end of the issue, but thank you very much for replying and trying to help.

 

[Balderdash999]

As farcas I can tell, thr problem is solved! Thank you for your help, though.