Windows acting strangely on startup

[Chiwwy]

My boot times are fine. Once I'm in Windows, everything looks normal and looks ready to go, but for some reason, any programs on my C drive, as well as things such as settings, Task Manager, and Command Prompt will not open for a long while. Trying to open task manager and command prompt does not bring up that administration clearance request screen until maybe a whole 5 - 8 minutes later. Firefox and other programs may open up, but will immediately stop responding or completely freeze.

The start menu and cortana are also effected and lagging.


The only changes to my PC as of yesterday (the problem has only started today) are that I installed Discord and 13 different PC games. Discord opens upon startup, so I thought maybe it was doing something, but even disabling it on startup (as well as other things that have always started upon startup) has not completely solved the problem. It has definitely helped, but it is still much slower and inconsistent and strange.

Oddly enough, windows explorer works perfectly smoothly, though image thumbnails are extra slow to load during this problematic time frame.

There is 20 out of 128GB left on my C: drive. (It's an M.2)

None of the problems persist after about 15 minutes after startup.

My PC is quite beefy and was built last year. I have a 6700k, 16GB RAM. I'll provide more specs if anyone thinks it's necessary. I am overclocking a bit, but it does not seem to affect the issue.


I imagine it is a problem with Windows itself in some way, but I have no idea what it could be or how to fix it. Windows is up to date.

I receive no errors upon startup. One time, the screen went completely black and I had to reboot (well, I was just too impatient to see if anything would happen eventually).

All of the results I get upon searching startup issues are windows boot times taking minutes long, but I am on the login screen within 4 seconds, so it is definitely a different problem. Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be? I'm quite a quick user that likes to get moving as soon as I sit down at my PC, so this problem is really bothersome.

Thanks in advance.

 

[LukeFatwalker]

Most startup issues are major issues that prevent you from booting into Windows, but in your case you're able to it's just that it's quite slow.

Suspect that there's a damaged driver which is causing these issues. Running Startup Repair may fix the damaged components, but if that doesn't work, re-installing Windows will definitely do it. If you need to re-install Windows, make sure you back up any important data.

If you re-install Windows and you're still getting the issue, it's likely a hardware issue.

Either way, once you're in the clear I'd recommend that you back up your data with a disk imager (i.e. Macrium Reflect) or a snapshot tool (i.e. RollBack Rx)