W10 pretty blue screen with circling dots on boot up/restart

speedlever · 28 Sep 2016

Lenovo Y500 laptop takes hours to boot but then appears to run normally. It's been doing this for quite a while, I just haven't taken the time to try to track down the culprit.

This is my daughter's laptop. Came as a Win8 or Win8.1 laptop and took the free upgrade to W10 when it first became available. AFAIK, it ran normally for a long time. I learned about the lengthy boot issue long after it began so I have no idea what caused/es this lengthy boot.

It is repeatable. I have a pretty blue screen with the circling dots. Right now it's been going for about 90 minutes or so. I expect it will be operational within the next hour or so.

How would I go about tracking down the culprit? I'm tempted to wipe it and put Win 8.1 back on it, but I guess I would lose the free upgrade to Win 10 (if you can call it that).

I honestly much prefer Win 8.1 using Classic shell in place of the Metro interface. Regardless, W10 is the future going forward so I would like to fix this if I can. Any suggestions how to proceed?

speedlever · 30 Sep 2016

This issue is now resolved. I was working it the other day and finally got the W10 anniversary update (1607) to install. Once this completed, the laptop was back to normal boot times and operation.

One thing I noticed, I was using Avira free AV and it had NOT updated in a long time (perhaps as long as this boot issue had been going on... but I dunno). I uninstalled Avira since it was so out of date and the Windows 10 update then installed (I seem to recall the 1607 update pending through several reboots before I uninstalled the problem AV). After the update was complete, I installed Avast free and all has been running normally since then.

I don't know if the Avira issue directly affected the bootup time and slow response and/or the update issue, or if that was coincidental. I've always had pretty good luck with Avira or Avast, although there was a time when Avast caused a laptop issue that Avira fixed, which is why I moved to Avira in the first place. Regardless, I'm back to Avast now and all is working well.

dalchina · 30 Sep 2016

Glad to hear it. Unfortunately a number of reports of long logins and circling dots, as you know.

You can still use Classic Shell on Win 10... I and a good many others here do. There's no difficulty - or should be no difficulty - in installing it. Win 10's menu is utterly useless to me as I have a large categorised start menu with subfolders; it strips the shortcuts from the folders and displays them alphabetically. (Think Help Help Help Help..... Readme Readme Readme...).

W10 pretty blue screen with circling dots on boot up/restart-untitled.png

mrgeek · 30 Sep 2016

Glad to hear your issue is resolved. It is ALWAYS a good idea before a major Upgrade to disable, or even better, uninstall 3rd party antivirus programs. It is a known issue from the introduction of Windows 10. Easy enough to reinstall, if you don't like Defender.

speedlever · 30 Sep 2016

Thanks dalchina. For some reason, it never crossed my mind to use Classic Shell when I moved from 8.1 to 10. Hmm.

mrgeek, I've never disabled or uninstalled an AV program prior to general updates. I don't even see the option in W10 to let me choose when to install updates. Looks like you can only choose to schedule or not the restart. At not in any options that I've found yet.

dalchina · 30 Sep 2016

Restarts in the anniversary edition are limited by 'active hours' - which annoyingly isn't found as such by searching Settings. This allows you to specify up to a 12 hour period in which restarts are not permitted.

My experience: even if the restart
- first occurs during the active hours period, it is not applied after the end of it
- first occurs outside the active hours period, does not occur automatically.

In both cases I'm notified of a pending restart.

If a restart is pending, you can specify that active hours is overridden.

Further: using a utility like 'Don't Sleep' (free) to constrain restart/sleep/hibernate probably offers a further option.

mrgeek · 30 Sep 2016

"I've never disabled or uninstalled an AV program prior to general updates."

I was not referring to general Windows updates but major Upgrades like 1511 or 1607 which were essentially an OS reinstall or if you're doing an in-place Repair or Upgrade from an ISO. No different than program installs asking you to disable antivirus before executing. They may block or quarantine essential files that they've never seen.

speedlever · 30 Sep 2016

That's all well and good, but how is one to differentiate between "normal" and "major" OS upgrades? And if you leave the PC unattended long enough, it's going to reboot on its own anyway. Or such has been my experience. I leave my PC on 24/7.

dalchina · 01 Oct 2016

Pro & Enterprise versions allow you to defer upgrades (e.g. 1511, 1607....) as distinct from updates.

Further: using a utility like 'Don't Sleep' (free) to constrain restart/sleep/hibernate probably offers a further option...
to stop your PC restarting

speedlever · 01 Oct 2016

Thanks for that info.