Slow Boot (300s) - smss.exe ?

Hey everyone,
since a long time, my PC hase a verry long boot time. Its about 300s which is verry unusal. I had it on windows 10 and also (after the upgrade) on windows 11. So i think its not wrong to wirte here in the win10 forum.

I started the performance analyzer and analyzed the whole boot performance.
I got something like the smss.exe started after 11 seconds and then needed 306 seconds...
Some other processes which started later, also need a verry long time. But idk whow i can fix this.
Can someone help?

I add my performance log for you:
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Win11 V21H2 Build 22000.493

Welcome to TenForums! I had basically the same problem and just posted about it on ElevenForum. In my case the slow boot was caused by having hundreds of thousands of folders in my user profile Temp folder. Removing everything in that folder resolved the problem for me on 2 machines.

I don't know if this will help you, but it might be worth checking.

Here is what I did:

1) Empty the Recycle Bin. That way, after I delete all these folders, just in case there is any problem, I can simply restore everything in the Recycle bin and the only thing that will be there is these temporary files.

2) Open File Explorer.

3) In the address bar type %Temp% and then hit ENTER.

4) Select everything in this folder and delete it all.

NOTE: If it tells you that you need administrator permission, confirm this. I believe that there is a checkbox to do this for all files. Select that check box. Finally, there may be a few folders or files that it won't delete. I think I had somewhere around 10 files or folders it wouldn't delete. That's just fine.

5) Reboot the system.

Again, no idea if that is what you are facing, but it's worth a shot because it instantly solved the issue for me on both my laptop and primary desktop system.

In case you are interested in seeing the thread on ElevenForum, here it is:

Hundreds of thousands of folders in %Temp% cause really slow logons | Windows 11 Forum

hsehestedt said:

Welcome to TenForums! I had basically the same problem and just posted about it on ElevenForum. In my case the slow boot was caused by having hundreds of thousands of folders in my user profile Temp folder. Removing everything in that folder resolved the problem for me on 2 machines.

I don't know if this will help you, but it might be worth checking.

Here is what I did:

1) Empty the Recycle Bin. That way, after I delete all these folders, just in case there is any problem, I can simply restore everything in the Recycle bin and the only thing that will be there is these temporary files.

2) Open File Explorer.

3) In the address bar type %Temp% and then hit ENTER.

4) Select everything in this folder and delete it all.

NOTE: If it tells you that you need administrator permission, confirm this. I believe that there is a checkbox to do this for all files. Select that check box. Finally, there may be a few folders or files that it won't delete. I think I had somewhere around 10 files or folders it wouldn't delete. That's just fine.

5) Reboot the system.

Again, no idea if that is what you are facing, but it's worth a shot because it instantly solved the issue for me on both my laptop and primary desktop system.

In case you are interested in seeing the thread on ElevenForum, here it is:

Hundreds of thousands of folders in %Temp% cause really slow logons | Windows 11 Forum

Doesnt work I had only about 300 folders there

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zinou said:

Hi,

First check your disk health using tools such as HD sentinel.
Your disk is at 100% during all the boot process;



Also try to update your Bios (the last update is from 2019)

HD sentinel says that with my HDD is everything fine. And i checked the Bios.. its the actual version.

So the question is, why is my disk writing so much at the boot process?

zinou said:

it's not writing it's reading.

it's an HDD, so make sure the superfetcher (sysmain service) is running, it can improve your boot time.

i checked it. It is alredy running

steve108 said:

Hello Dongxuh,
If you have hibernation enabled, see if there's anything significant improvement with it disabled.

checked... no difference

steve108 said:

Other things to try would be booting to safe mode and clean boot.

Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts

i did it, but unfortunately a clean start doesnt make any difference