USB stick prevents boot since update to 1903 - and slowwwwwww performa

Hi out there,

Surprise, surprise! Since (painfully) updating to 1903: several new problems.

Two of the main ones:

When having any USB stick plugged in, boot is halted almost after startup. Unplugging the stick(s) and hitting Enter resumes boot. Plugging USB stick(s) back in after boot makes them function normally.
Judging from the several
Internet pages o,n the same topic, this is already an old Windows quirk. But I never had it before the 1903 update... which was done after a totally and deep clean reinstall of Windows (what else is new with Windows updates?)

But the preceding quirl is but a minor annoyance compared to the following, post 1903 update: the whole computer has slowed down to a snail crawl, keuboard and mouse reaction included, which gradually gets faster after half an hour or so, but never up to the pre-update level - and again I don't seem the only victim,of this marvellous new Microsoft enhancement.

So, what am I to do? Please help me with a solution, with the second problem a priority.

PS - I am now trying out the "solution" proposed by the Windows specialist in:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...9-e1bb9207b9d1
But it is painfully slow, and I have not great confidence in the result...

Thanks,

haku

Thanks!

I did anyway the DISM.EXE + scannow Microsoft check as explained on the mentioned page. Everything was okay... except scannow which came up with some corrupted (and meanwhile repaired) elements. So that loooooong check was not completely useless.

I will try to change the boot order. No problem. Seems logical. But why this suddenly started now and not with the previous build will remain a mystery.

I didn't mean that the USB problem was in any way linked to point 2 - the perceived slowness, the only link being that both problems appeared after the 1903 update.

By "resource usage" do you mean:
- Processes? And in this CPU / Memory / Disk / Power Usage? And which column do you want me to favour?
- Or Details?

I'll do both, but they are of course quite unstable statistics, being renewed constantly...

Finally: over my various HDs I have more than 2TB free space, with 384 GB of 587 GB free on C:
Virtual memory is managed by Windows...
Best,

H

Task Performance Sequel High to Low.zipHere are Processes CPU / Memory Disk - high to low (first screens).
Clean boot didn't show much difference. But... whether that Microsoft check (and probably scannow) did something good - machine seems a bit less sluggy now.

When I open Cortana, I saw in Task Manager that it gobbles up a lot of power usage.

However, regarding point 1 of my thread, changing the boot order in BIOS doesn't change anything. Boot still hangs momentarily on an active USB stick, and can only resume after it is unplugged. As usual, I'm not the only one confronted with such annoyances.

H

Ah, well, the main HD is five years old...
The external has just been bought and is much faster indeed.
I'm thinking of buying an SSD to install the OS on. My Notebook is fully equipped with such SSDs (64 + 512) and works incredibly fast. So...
But no time for such things as installations now. Have to finish an important work...

h

Many thanks. I will look up those threads.

Speed has increased quite considerably meanwhile, but I'll wait until tomorrow morning to see if things keep up. The USB stick problem remains unresolved. Tomorrow, I'm buying a completely new stick, and will see how that one behaves (all sticks I tried out were used ones). Many users seem to struggle with the same problem...

But let's consider meanwhile the present thread solved. Many thanks for your invaluable help and counsel.

Best,

haku