Troubleshooting a PC that freezes on the boot animation

Hi everyone,

I have a Dell PC that some time ago has started freezing on the Windows boot screen. It only does this occasionally, and requires holding the power button to reset, after which it will boot successfully. The freeze will happen just as the logo begins fading away, and it will never freeze while being used after boot.

I've tried updating system device drivers to their latest, but no luck. Memory check is clean, GPU benchmark doesn't cause any issues either.

I understand that Windows can print out debugging information as it loads. I've enabled boot logging and can read the ntbtlog, so that's good. I'm concerned that it will be lost at next boot after an error, though. So I'd like to have debugging information printed to the boot screen. I've checked No GUI Boot and OS Boot information, but Windows still only shows the logo and spinning wheel at boot. I've also tried disabling quietboot in bcdedit, but something keeps turning it back on.

I'm using Windows build 20H2. Can anyone help me get these messages displayed, or better yet troubleshoot the root issue?

Thank you!

My Dell XPS 8930 does the same thing.

@spunk Thank you for the suggestions. The OS is the first boot device in the BIOS, although I can't see how that would have been causing Windows to freeze at such a late stage in the loading process. I haven't tried removing USB devices yet.

@geierr What I've done is disable Fast Boot, and so far, I think that may have fixed the crashes. See if that helps you.