win 10 takes 5+ minutes to boot on SSD (hangs on windows logo)

Hiya. i have had this issue for long time and i never bothered to look into this further, but now i'm asking help as its gotten quite annoying. i hope someone can help me fix it or identify the cause.

so here's my issue:
I have SSD and it's in perfect condition. when PC is running everything works smooth but if i reboot or shut down and boot again, then windows takes like 5-7 minutes to boot.
for past year i have been using hybernate or sleep because of the long boot time and it instantly resumes from hybernate or sleep.
I use truecrypt and my SSD is fully encrypted, when i use hybernate, i have to enter my password on boot and it all goes smooth, it restores the session from hiberfil.sys no problem!

however reboot / shutdown + boot will cause the long boot time again. i haven't measured exact time but it seems consistent around 5-7 minutes.

really weird thing is that after i enter my truecrypt pass, it instantly starts loading windows as it should, i see the windows logo, but then ALL of my USB devices turn OFF. LED lights on my keyboard, mouse and additional keyboard all turn off, while my headset's control unit and LEDs remains on. My headset is analog, but it uses USB to power lights only and those stay on, but anything that uses drivers turns off.
I suspect some USB driver issue, so that windows tries to load the driver over and over, but fails, this would explain why USB devices that need a driver, all turn off and why it takes consistent amount of time to boot.

i have tried yanking out all usb devices with no luck, so clearly not hardware issue.
it MIGHT be nvidia drivers issue, but that's something i'm not willing to reinstall. i use modded nvidia shadowplay (for offline use) and i only update drivers via device manager, its nightmare to reinstall it all.

basically what i'm asking: is there a way to analyze what is causing the issue?
ive enabled boot logging, but i dont see anything wrong there, i have attached the file if someone can take a look pls:
ntbtlog.txt

is there any way to enable some advanced analysis mode that would tell me the exact place where windows is hanging?
i'm sure i would be able to fix it myself if i would just know what to fix or where to even look.

PLS DONT tell me to reinstall or update windows, that is not an option for me. i have spent way too much time and effort on customising my windows. this boot time is only issue, everything else works nice and smooth! i do regular maintenance on my pc. stuff like run ccleaner with almost all options on, registry scans, defrag of other HDDs and so on!
update is not going to happen, because of truecrypt (long story short. i would have to make copy of ssd, put it onto backup ssd, decrypt, update, check if it works, encrypt, make a copy of backup ssd, put it back on primary, check if it works, then re-encrypt)

i usually remember what i changed but for couple months i used sleep and hybernate and i lost track of what i changed or installed, thats when the issue started. however i'm 99% sure its either nvidia drivers or some usb driver, could be ScpToolkit (it works fine, but i suspect it may cause issues during boot).
either way im not willing to blindly just comb in the dark and randomly butcher my windows one program, one driver at a time to find what is causing the issue.

i came here to look for a way to identify the trouble maker! and not bypass the issue by just removing everything or reinstalling. im not the kind of person to ignore or bypass the issue. i want to find out WHY this is happening and then tackle the trouble maker. i hope someone can help. thanks in advance.

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs. It will help us to help you
System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums

Do you have any other drives connected to the MB (SATA or USB)? If you do, disconnect and try to do a fresh boot.
Is Fast start enabled?
When did it started to boot slowly? Was after the drive encryption, an update, software installation etc?

TairikuOkami said:

I hope that you mean some alternative, since truecrypt has not been updated for 14 years.
Aside from being insecure, it clearly is not fully compatible with the latest software/drivers.

no I mean truecrypt. it works perfectly fine, you do realize that TC got bought off by US government right? they put that mesasge up there for people like you to scare you off and prevent people from using it.
i'm willing to bet my life on that you nor anyone else is capable of accessing any of my data. there are no vulnerabilities, that "warning" on their site is for simple minded people like you.
TC used to brag with the case where US government got hold of terrorist's pc that was encryhpted with TC and after 2 years of trying, CIA gave up on it. I think i'm perfectly secure if even CIA couldnt find a way in after 2 years!

dalchina said:

Analysis can be done using the MS Windows Performance Analyser and Recorder.

You can see examples of its use for analysing long boot times in various threads on tenforums.
Download and Install Windows Performance Toolkit in Windows 10

This is a technically demanding tool, and has to be used in the appropriate manner.

Only a couple of members have given their time and expertise to help people. You will see who they are from the example threads, if you care to search tenforums.

You will also then find examples of possible settings to use before running the tool to capture a trace.


*** The forum clearly prompted you to specify your Windows build number, and told you how (so we don't have to keep asking). Could you please do so?

As TairikuOkami has said, please eliminate Truecrypt from the equation.


- if that includes registry cleaning, that is regarded as a risk, not a benefit.



How do you consolidate your build and avoid the fear you feel?
a. Use disk imaging regularly and routinely so that you get a second chance should things go wrong and potentially avoid a clean install. Endlessly recommended here.
b. Make sure the customisations you apply are done in such a way that the either
i. Are unaffected by updates and upgrades
ii. Can be easily reapplied

Example: I recently upgraded a PC from 1903 to 21H2. It looks like this:

- and survived the upgrade. I planned for that.

- may I ask how you know that?

1. thanks might give that toolkit a go, sounds promising.

2. i dont see how windows build can help fix this. are you telling me that each windows build has different tools for analyzing this? if so, please give me a list of different tools available that can identify my issue, otherwise build number is not important. however i should have mentioned its windows 10 pro as some home edition has less tools as far as i know, but build number doesnt matter.
3. eliminating truecrypt is not possible. im not willing to have my confidential data exposed. it was very stressful updating my windows last time. i had to keep it decrypted for several hours! also i'm 100% sure tc isnt the issue here. been using it over 15 years with no issues.

4. how i know my SSD is fine? by running tests and using tools and doing regular maintenance. this includes defrag of HDDs and optimization of SSD, including checkdisk and check for bad sectors. i also use crystal diskinfo which does a quick scan to see if drives are fine. also i dont put games or other SSD killers on my SSD that would hog like 1tb data per day. it gets bare minimal usage and regular maintenance and checks.

i know most here are legitametly trying to help and i try not to sound rude, but as i said im not interested in randomly "butchering" my windows to find the one thing that causes this issue. i only came here to see if anyone knows of a way to first identify the issue without taking the random butcher approach (its where you randomly delete and uninstall things to see if its fixed).
i will try that toolkit first to see how complex it is and if it can identify the issue.
thanks again for all your help. i hope it works.

dalchina said:

Then you might consider disconnecting your internet and working in a Faraday cage....

Such whole disk encryption simply protects your data if your PC is stolen. Once decrypted and on line, your disk is accessible to anyone as any system is.

If you have really sensitive data either store on the cloud or off line. Cloud services are really cheap these days and their security is often at Military grade strength -- I believe the USA's NSA (security agency) has also approved Ms's AZURE Cloud service as sufficiently robust for US Military and other intelligence related material. Google's cloud server is also similarly related.

I really see no reason why disks need to be encrypted on purely domestic computers -- however that's a users individuals choice. I can understand things like USB sticks having encryption - for example if you want to take home patented work material to work on - that's another issue and these days most work places will have VPN's to restrict access to this material anyway.

If you use your own computer as a VPN traffic to and from it is encrypted anyway and modern VPN systems are almost impossible to break into - certainly for a "typical hacker".

However I can't see that using an old program like that would cause a large drop in performance - it's still making calls to the I/O system and doing it's encryption / decryption as it always was so I suspect you've got other bottlenecks somewhere in the system.

Keep your old install, create a new one (easy to do on vhdx physical files so you have BOTH windows installations ), and gradually install one by one the same apps as you've got on the old system and see when the performance starts to drop off -- then problem solved. !!

BTW using vhdx files - it's easy to have several versions of Windows (separate real versions not VM's and works on Windows HOME editions too.



Cheers
jimbo