How can I trace a boot from power on to login?

win10today said:

... Is there a way to trace the boot to see where it is hanging?

I'm glad your problem is fixed, but your original question was a good one. And the answer is "Yes". Sort of. If the slow down is in Windows (rather than something in the boot process before Windows starts), and is far enough along in Windows initialization such that Windows can start traces prior to the slowdown, you are in luck. Sort of.

Microsoft has a bunch of diagnostic tools available in its "Sysinternals Suite"
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../bb842062.aspx
One of those utilities is Process Monitor which "shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity". It has an option called "Enable Boot Logging". This is explained (among other places, I assume) at a web site called "How To Enable System Boot Time Logging using Process Monitor Tool"
How To Enable System Boot Time Logging using Process Monitor Tool

The only difficulty is that you are going to collect a lot of data. (I just now ran it for about 5 seconds and collected over 243,000 records. That was not during a boot, of course, but it gives an idea of the amount of data Process Monitor collects.) Then you get to do something with it. You might get lucky and see something obvious, but don't count on it. :)

dencal said:

Do an exterior backup is the only fool proof way, Free Macrium software is a good option.

Do you know if the backup would also include the recovery part of the ssd on my laptop? I have never done a backup before but I would still want the factory win10 recovery section to be included just in case.

pokeefe0001, thanks. If boot times slow down again, I will try and use those ms tools to see if I can figure it all out, but man, so many things load during boot that I could be there weeks just looking at all the info lol.