Windows suddenly took 30+ minutes to boot this morning

[pixartist]

Also I heard a slight clicking noise from the hard disk. YES I KNOW. My HD is probably broken and I need to get a new one ASAP. What confuses me though is, I recently (1 week ago) made a routine hard disk error check and everything was okay. Also now that windows has booted, everything runs fine and not slow at all, including hard-disk heavy operations like filesearch. I don't wanna reboot right now, so I can not error-check C:\.Could there be any other possible (maybe software) reason for this ?

 

[drkatz42]

Also I heard a slight clicking noise from the hard disk. YES I KNOW. My HD is probably broken and I need to get a new one ASAP. What confuses me though is, I recently (1 week ago) made a routine hard disk error check and everything was okay. Also now that windows has booted, everything runs fine and not slow at all, including hard-disk heavy operations like filesearch. I don't wanna reboot right now, so I can not error-check C:\.Could there be any other possible (maybe software) reason for this ?

Everything on your HD is backed up? The manufacturer of your drive probably has diagnostic software available to check the integrity of your HD. I would also run scans for malware, viruses, etc.

 

[pixartist]

Yes I have backups. The WD quick test did not find any errors. I'm gonna let the extended test run later.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Have you installed any new antivirus software that is possibly scanning files during boot time? Some A/V programs are very agressive at boot time. If you haven't installed any new software recently, A quick system restore to a date you know worked ok may fix the problem.