Windows 10 Freezing, Slow Startup Time, SSD Occasionally Missing Upon Boot

[Gldemian]

Current Setup:
C: M.2 SSD (OS)
D: Sata 3 SSD (Storage)
E: Sata 3 HDD (Storage)
Windows 10 64 bit pro, most recent iteration

Problem started up a couple months ago, didn't concern myself with it too much at the time because it was infrequent. It's now happening once or twice a day, Windows will start getting very slow, will not let me exit windows or open new ones. Will let me move my mouse and interact and videos will keep playing for a little bit. Within a minute or two my screen will totally freeze.

Not sure if this is related or unrelated, but the problem appeared around the same time. Windows will take forever to boot (sometimes 10+ minutes) and occasionally once it's booted my D: drive will be missing! Prior to this, my boot time was very fast. This scared me because the last time this started happening my drive eventually totally died. I hadn't backed everything up which sucked, but the drive itself was 7-8 year old 500gb hdd so I couldn't really complain. This time it's a 960gb SSD that isn't even 2 years old. I ran CrystalDiskInfo and it says all 3 of my drives are totally healthy.

Outside of the slow boot time, drive sometimes missing, and freezing, there are no issues with the PC which makes me think that it is not just a failing drive. Read/write times for all drives are fine and I have no performance issues when running intensive applications or gaming. The crashes/freezes will also happen when I'm not doing anything intensive, just Chrome & microsoft word running.

What I've tried: reseating ram, have everything running on stock clocks again, caught up on all windows updates, uninstalled all unnecessary applications and run an antivirus scan.

 

[drtweak]

Run with only your M.2 and see how it boots up. if it is fine add the SSD, if it is fine again add the HDD.

If it slows down after adding one of them that might be the issue.

Also when you installed windows on the M.2 was that the ONLY drive installed?

And just because Crystal Disk Info says it is good doesn't always mean it is. I have had new drives where it says it is good, but the read and write speeds are through the floor showing signs of head failure.

 

[Gldemian]

Tried with all drives disconnected but the M.2. Problem persists. I did find my BIOS time in Task Manager, it is only 13 seconds. The long boot time spends most of the time with my motherboards splash screen + the Windows loading icon. It looks like this http://blog.tonywall.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/4-UEFI-boots-with-BIOS-logo-instead-of-WIndows-1-e1431854148578.jpg
except with ASRock logo instead of ASUS.

Only the m.2 was installed when I installed windows, I made that mistake a couple years ago where the boot manager ended up on an hdd instead of the boot drive. But the boot manager is installed on the M.2 this time.

I have disabled Fast Startup and some other power options that google led me to, none of these have helped either.

Edit: I timed a few boots, and it seems pretty consistently in the 3:30 range. So not quite as long as I thought, but it definitely should not be this slow, correct? I also occasionally still get the fast under 30 second boot time, but I'd guess that happens about 1 in 20 boots. I've also ran a test for bad sectors on the M.2 drive and it looks clean there as well. Read/write speeds are good as well.

 

[drtweak]

If it speeds up after removing the other drives it may not just be the boot but something else. I have had long boot times due to USB drives well or other USB devices. My H100i Cooler which is plugged into a USB header for managing it, didn't like the one header it was plugged into. I though I had a bad MB when my PC would take 30 seconds to just Beep after hitting the power button and then post. Took a while to find that issue but I have seen extra drives, maybe failing, that cause this as well. If you can I would try reformatting those drives as well.

 

[iloveflash]

Hi all,

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but this issue sounds similar to the issue I'm having, and I wasn't able to find another thread on the internet that describes it.

My system:
Gigabyte x470 Aorus Ultra Gaming
Ryzen 7 2700x CPU
Vega 56 GPU
Crucial 8x2 DDR4 3200 RAM
500gb 970 Evo NVMe SSD
2TB 5400rpm Seagate HDD
750 watt 80+ Gold
Windows 10 64-bit Home update 1809
Possibly important: 2 monitors connected and Radeon Wattman enabled

My issue is not quite the same as OP's, since my computer doesn't slow down when running, nor does it freeze up. However, when I shut down the computer, then power it back on, it takes 2-3 minutes to boot into Windows. I see the same splash screen with the spinning dots and they spin very slowly. This is indicative of the computer booting from the hard drive.

Here's the funny thing. When I RESTART the computer (i.e. select "Restart" from within Windows), the computer starts up in 15 seconds.

When I power off the computer halfway through the slow start up, then hit the power button, it starts up in 15 seconds.

Even when I change the BIOS settings and hit reboot, it starts up in 15 seconds.

And yes, sometimes I will shut down the computer and power it back on, and it will start in 15 seconds. As OP said this only happens about 1 out of 20 times.

What I am curious about is when this issue started happening for OP. In my case I've had fast boot times since day 1 of building my computer, but when I installed the 2TB HDD I enabled a feature called StoreMI to create a virtual drive, and ever since then I've been having the hit-or-miss boot times mentioned above. I configured the BIOS settings to prioritize the UEFI SSD created by StoreMI to manage the SSD, but I suspect there is another setting somewhere else that supersedes this, and tells the computer to boot from the HDD when starting normally (shut down > power-on button) and from the SSD every other time. This is just a suspicion and I have no hard proof. I honestly have no idea what else could be the problem.

tl;dr: my computer has a virtual StoreMI drive that boots at the speed of the HDD whenever I shut down the computer and power it back on. Boots at the speed of the SSD every other time (restart option in Windows, hard reset, etc.). BIOS says boot from SSD, so I've no idea why this is happening.

Any help appreciated guys. This is my first post but I've been lurking on these forums for years, y'all are awesome.

EDIT: My problem is solved. Read here.