large slowdown on fresh install

I took a gaming pc off a family member as they got a new one, everything worked fine on it however I did a fresh copy of windows 10 just to have a clean machine. Installation went trouble free from a usb stick however the completely fresh copy of windows (full format of hard drive, no repair/quick format etc) is extremely slow and giving various errors trying to install basic things such as nvidia drivers, steam etc.
I've personally reinstalled this same machine several times in the past and had no issues.

To give examples - and I've literally done nothing but set up a login to windows and rebooted - after logging in clicking to view folders in file explorer it's a good 1 minute wait for the window to open, right clicking takes around 20 seconds to bring up the right click menu, installation of the nvidia drivers throws up errors and won't pass the installation stage and the start menu won't open at all.
Everything is installed to an old but working ssd, it;s not the most modern device (i3 3220, 8 gig ram, gtx 960, win 10 pro) but before the fresh windows install everything was snappy and responsive. Now even clicking menu items is a 20 second wait.

Other than just trying again with another install, is there anything obvious that's causing this?

dalchina said:

Hi, assuming the PC was running Win 10 originally, which build was it running?

Which build is it running now? (The forum prompted you to specify this)

What is the make and model of the PC, and about how old is it?
Noted the GTX 960 is fairly recent.



If you boot to Safe Mode does it respond quickly when logged in?

And if you perform a clean boot?

How long does it take to boot to the lock screen?

Previous build unknown, formatted and gone so no way to see. Current build also unknown as menus not responsive and can't find out. Downloaded yesterday with windows media creation tool so I'd assume latest build.

Pc was built by me a few years ago, more specific specs: corsair vs550 psu, gah61m-s2pv motherboard, i3 3220 cpu with no overclock, 8gb ram. I upgrade gpu to each new model on main machine so 960 old to me - this particular one was actually my old gpu several years ago.

Not sure what is meant by 'clean boot' and safe mode is apparently not functional as I just get a black screen after the post menu (left it 15 minutes).

booting to lockscreen from power button takes 1 minute and 41 seconds with quick post. Is this slow for an ssd or am I just accustomed to my higher performance drives on the main machine?

dalchina said:

Do you have more than one drive in your PC? If so, remove any others, reboot and note time to boot to lock screen.
.

Well that solved it, I didn't install to the SSD .

It's on a hard drive that's apparently not worked for some time but is the same size as the ssd.
Thanks for the help, I'd probably have done 5 reinstalls before I figured that out myself.

dalchina said:

This time, have only the drive in place that you want to be the system drive - that's the safest possible option.

I did consider that but decided to be lazy, lesson learnt