I also did a boot trace with ProcessMonitor and WinBootInfo, and though they can't give detail into what's causing the delay, they both show that there is a 4 minute delay at the start of boot.
On the WinBootInfo screenshot below, the total boot time is <25s, but the boot to session manager is 241s, or just over 4 minutes. And on the right it shows a 4 minute gap between the kernel starting to load and the first system driver loading.
Many years ago I had used free software that reports the boot time for every bootable file.
With this software you were able to turn off any item on boot or delay the launch for after the boot.
This software is no longer available and the company that had the free software was turned into a services company.
See if you can find any old links for Soluto downlodable software.
Then see if there are any companies on downloads.com that may have similar free software.
It is relatively easy to create the recordings. The challenge will be to learn how to interpret them. Sometimes it can take a while to find someone to interpret them.
If you had problems during regular use that your were diagnosing you would use administrative command prompt and launch the application using wprui.exe
If you are using it for boot problems then you would choose the performance scenario as boot. Then you would make 3 boot recordings. If you were doing your own analysis you would use the verbose recording. If you were posting it you would use the light setting. The logging mode is changed from the default memory to file.
There is a slower method but an alternative method to work on your slow boots.
Place your computer in clean boot and compare the start up times. If there is significant improvement with clean boot then you know that it is one of the non-Microsoft applications that is impacting the boot.
zinou:
Yeah, that's the sucky part of all this :-/
zbook:
Hey, I remember that Soluto app! I'd tried it when it first was out, it was pretty slick. Too bad they killed it. I did some searching but haven't found a copy of it yet.
abriolitto50:
Thanks for the tips, but the clean boot takes just as long as a normal boot :-(
An in place upgrade repair is relatively easy.
It may correct an unknown problem and creates a starting point to work from.
It will reset any Windows customized settings and these will need to be reset.
Create a brand new bootable Windows 10 iso:
Download Windows 10
Perform an in place upgrade repair:
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade | Windows 10 Tutorials
If you do not have a flash drive ( > or = 8 GB)the in place upgrade repair can be done by downloading the iso to the desktop.
Having a flash drive iso will allow you in the future to fix windows problems on multiple computers.
Before performing the in place upgrade repair run the BETA log collector and post a zip into this thread.
There are two log collectors: DM and BETA
At sometime the beta will replace the DM log collector.
The beta log collector is new the bottom of this webpage:
BSOD - Posting Instructions - Windows 10 Forums
(extract > open)
Thanks, I've been saving the in place upgrade for (almost) last, and I'm running out of options so I may need to do that. But first I have a few more ideas to try, and then some backups to make.
Thanks again!
There is a slower method but an alternative method to work on your slow boots.
Place your computer in clean boot and compare the start up times. If there is significant improvement with clean boot then you know that it is one of the non-Microsoft applications that is impacting the boot.
A quick update on my original issue:
I did the repair install (in-place upgrade) and it fixed my slow boot issue! It went from sitting 6 minutes on the initial Windows boot logo and spinning circle, to now, it takes just 8 seconds. What a difference.
It took me a while to prep for and set up a second bootable drive as a backup of my pre-repair boot disk. But after getting that done, the repair install was easy to do and went without a hitch.
I have a lot of customized Windows settings, and I was afraid that these would get reset during the repair process, but most of them came through untouched. After using the repaired Windows desktop for a few weeks, there were only four things so far that I've discovered that were modified, including two random start menu shortcuts that for some reason got deleted.
This was my first repair install, and its a good one to have in your toolkit of fixes.
That's great news.
Glad to see the slow boot fixed.
For startup and recovery system failure it typically changes an unchecked automatic restart back to the default checked box automatic restart.
So that's good that it was able to maintain many of the custom settings.
Consider making a backup image:
Macrium Software | Your Image is Everything
Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect | Tutorials
In case there are unexpected problems you can restore a backup image typically in less than one hour:
power outages
malware
ransomware
corruption of the operating system
corruption of the registry
failure to boot
slow boot
etc.
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