Windows boot waaaay slow since two days ago

My Panasonic CF-SX2 laptop normally takes under 15 seconds from power on to password entry. Starting a day or three ago, it increased dramatically. I just clocked it at 2:20 minutes. I cannot think of any changes I have made to the machine so recently.

I get the first indication that the bios sees Windows very quickly, as before. Then the circle of white stars on black screen starts revolving. It does this twice. This phase is the longest.

Once I get to the password entry, my machine seems just as fast as it ever did.

My first thought was that I might have run low on hard drive space on my C: partition for the pagefile. But no, the pagefile is only 8 Gb and I still have 40 Gb free. This is a 1 Tb SSD drive. The machine has 8 Gb of RAM. The processor is Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3320M CPU @ 2.60GHz. Windows 10 Pro with whatever updates MS has pushed.

Any suggestions?

I always keep hibernation disabled, so it is not that.

I am pretty sure I have fast boot set in bios. In any case, I have not gone into the bios since I updated and checked a Macrium Reflect Rescue USB stick a few weeks ago. This problem started max 2 days ago.

Incidentally, I rechecked my timings. On restart or power up, the Windows logo (a blue 4-pane window) appears within 5 seconds. Then there is a circle of rotating stars for 30 seconds, with the Windows logo still showing and the rest black. Then the screen flashes blank and then the circle reappears on a black screen, without the Windows logo. That takes 2 minutes more until the password prompt.

After entering my pw, it's around 10 seconds or less until I see the desktop.

Hi
Check the latest driver that has been installed or updated. What have changed ?

On 8/15:
August 14, 2018—KB4343909 (OS Build 17134.228)

There are a lot of changes there. I think the slow boot started more recently, but I am not 100% sure.

In any case, if this update caused such a significant change in boot time, I'd think there's be lots of other tenforums users reporting it.

I did a command line long ago to disable hibernation. I checked it again today and it is still disabled.

I never enabled Windows Fast Startup, though I had completely forgotten about it. (Thanks for the reminder!). With a reasonable fast processor and an SSD drive, there's never been any need to speed up booting. I never measure specifically, but it certainly went from power on to Windows password prompt in less than 30 seconds.

My C: partition is not encrypted, by the way. So it couldn't be some kind of BitLocker slowdown.

Caledon Ken said:

If hibernation is off Fast Start is off and can't be turned on.

Did you check as zinou suggested to see what drivers have been installed recently?

1. As I wrote, I don't think Windows Fast Start has ever been implemented and was not necessary for the previous, very fast boot I normally saw.

2. Aside from checking the Windows update history, I did actually spend some time in Device Manager looking for driver updates. I checked every Intel driver. The newest was Intel graphics, but still dated 2015. That was when I bought this machine. I randomly checked some other drivers (sound, hard drive, etc.). Again, nothing new in the past couple of years.

3. I cannot find any new drivers listed in the Microsoft updates that have occurred recently enough to be a source of any problem. It is of course possible that I just have not recognized new drivers in the description of the MS updates. Here it is:

August 14, 2018—KB4343909: This update includes quality improvements. No new operating system features are being introduced in this update. Key changes include:

• Provides protections against a new speculative execution side-channel vulnerability known as L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF) that affects Intel® Core® processors and Intel® Xeon® processors (CVE-2018-3620 and CVE-2018-3646). Make sure previous OS protections against Spectre Variant 2 and Meltdown vulnerabilities are enabled using the registry settings outlined in the Windows Client and Windows Server guidance KB articles. (These registry settings are enabled by default for Windows Client OS editions, but disabled by default for Windows Server OS editions.)
• Addresses an issue that causes high CPU usage that results in performance degradation on some systems with Family 15h and 16h AMD processors. This issue occurs after installing the June 2018 or July 2018 Windows updates from Microsoft and the AMD microcode updates that address Spectre Variant 2 (CVE-2017-5715 – Branch Target Injection).
• Addresses an issue that prevents apps from receiving mesh updates after resuming. This issue occurs for apps that use Spatial Mapping mesh data and participate in the Sleep or Resume cycle.
• Ensures that Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge support the preload="none" tag.
• Addresses an issue that prevents some applications running on HoloLens, such as Remote Assistance, from authenticating after upgrading from Windows 10, version 1607, to Windows 10, version 1803.
• Addresses an issue that significantly reduced battery life after upgrading to Windows 10, version 1803.
• Addresses an issue that causes Device Guard to block some ieframe.dll class IDs after installing the May 2018 Cumulative Update.
• Addresses a vulnerability related to the Export-Modulemember() function when used with a wildcard (*) and a dot-sourcing script. After installing this update, existing modules on devices that have Device Guard enabled will intentionally fail. The exception error is “This module uses the dot-source operator while exporting functions using wildcard characters, and this is disallowed when the system is under application verification enforcement.” For more information, see https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/CVE-2018-8200 and https://aka.ms/PSModuleFunctionExport.
  
• Addresses an issue that was introduced in the July 2018 .NET Framework update. Applications that rely on COM components were failing to load or run correctly because of “access denied,” “class not registered,” or “internal failure occurred for unknown reasons” errors.
  
• Addresses a vulnerability issue by correcting the way that the .NET Framework handles high-load or high-density network connections. For more information, see CVE-2018-8360.
  
• Security updates to Windows Server.