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Very slow boot time - 100% disk active time
Hi !
I purchased a new laptop a couple days ago (ASUS ZenBook UX410UAK – specs in screenshot) and straight from the first day I noticed it was way too slow, especially on boot.
I managed to pinpoint down the problem to the HDD (ST1000LM035-1RK172). The drive ALWAYS upon boot and occasionally during simple everyday work goes to 100% active time for several minutes, causing the system to be way too slow (opening an empty word document sometimes takes around 15 seconds !!) and the boot time to be around 2-3 minutes before the drive goes back to normal HDD active time and the system starts responding normally again.
Keep in mind, I have only installed the absolute minimum of programs I need in order to pinpoint if on of them is causing the problem. (Windows -factory install with all ASUS bloatware unfortunately- with latest windows updates, Office 2016 Pro, Google Drive -backup and sync-, Google Chrome, Thunderbird, GIMP, 7zip, AOMEI Backupper, CrystalDiskMark and CrystalDiskInfo).
After reading around the forums a lot, I made some tests in order to get an idea of what’s at fault, most importantly to exclude a hardware issue that would qualify for an immediate RMA of the laptop. First I run a chkdsk /f /r on boot. The whole process took 3 hours !!! Is this normal ?
Anyways, log from event viewer is this :
Everything looks ok to me.Code:Checking file system on C: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is OS. A disk check has been scheduled. Windows will now check the disk. Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ... 368896 file records processed. File verification completed. 47896 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ... 542 reparse records processed. 473206 index entries processed. Index verification completed. 0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found. 542 reparse records processed. Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ... Cleaning up 1692 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9. Cleaning up 1692 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9. Cleaning up 1692 unused security descriptors. Security descriptor verification completed. 52156 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal... 35489696 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed. Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data ... 368880 files processed. File data verification completed. Stage 5: Looking for bad, free clusters ... 229032138 free clusters processed. Free space verification is complete. Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems. No further action is required. 975659007 KB total disk space. 58841668 KB in 204960 files. 168176 KB in 52157 indexes. 0 KB in bad sectors. 520607 KB in use by the system. 65536 KB occupied by the log file. 916128556 KB available on disk. 4096 bytes in each allocation unit. 243914751 total allocation units on disk. 229032139 allocation units available on disk. Internal Info: 00 a1 05 00 68 ec 03 00 c5 16 07 00 00 00 00 00 ....h........... 6a 00 00 00 b4 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 j............... Windows has finished checking your disk. Please wait while your computer restarts.
I then run the CrystalDisk benchmarks :
Last but not least, I checked the Task Manager and the Resource Monitor to see if a specific process is causing the delays, but I couldn’t get anything specific. Here are screenshots of a typical boot (processes in the resource monitor are sorted according to disk usage, from highest to lowest) and the apps that run upon boot in task manager.
Disabling OneDrive and GoogleDrive on boot improves boot time, however a) I need those two apps on boot and b) occasionally, especially in the first few minutes after boot sequence has completed, simple tasks like opening an empty docx or xls takes 10-15 seconds !!
Any ideas on how to proceed will be greatly appreciated. I know this ain’t an SSD but I believe the times recorder for booting and opening apps are unacceptable even for a non-SSD. Chkdsk didn’t report any faults with the drive, so maybe it’s a motherboard’s controller issue ? I get the feeling that the disk has good transfer rates when it gets going, however access times feel quite slow. Should I just suck it up and accept that the disk is just slow and be done with it (and buy an SSD) ? I would really like to exclude all other possibilities before I draw that conclusion.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Last edited by iparout; 25 Mar 2018 at 07:13.