Very slow startup++

[Penfold7]

My sons PC has become very slow to start up. It takes on Average from pressing the power button approx 15mins to be fully useable.
It has an AMD FX 6300 6 core CPU, with a non stock cooler. 16Gb of RAM. AMD Radeon RX570 GPU. 1Tb HDD.

Not sure why this is happening. I’ve cleaned the system as best I can etc, nothing that’s not needed is starting up as far as I can tell.

The only think I can think of is the HDD. We had to change this a while ago as the original WD 1TB drive was faulty. I replaced it with 1 I had around which was a 1Tb 2.5in HDD, from a laptop I had. Could it be a slow spin speed causing these issues?

Appreciate any help

[Pyro]

How did you clean the system?

Modern systems should have their OS loaded off an SSD, those old mechanical drives are spinning platters that physically read and write information - it’s very slow by today’s standards.

Furthermore - Laptop/Notebook components generally don’t perform as well as Desktop/Tower components.

Before I can definitively say it’s just a slow drive, let’s get some more information:

Download and run the free version of speccy.

Once you have ran speccy, follow the instructions to upload a snapshot found here.

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:
[ol]
[li]In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.[/li][li]In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.[/li][li]Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot dialog box. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.[/li][/ol]

Please list your power supply unit

[Penfold7]

Ok. Will get that info for you. Forgot to say…my son tells me his games keep freezing for a minute or two then come back. I was using his pc today for some work, and noticed every now and again the whole system becomes unresponsive and then bursts back into life. Also occasionally the system loses internet, but all other devices fine. It’s connected to router via a homeplug, which are both plugged directly into sockets, not extension.
Will post back in a bit

[Penfold7]

Cleaned the system of temp files etc with ccleaner and used the reg cleaner. Also used windows own file cleaner.
Confirmed the HDD that’s in spins at 5200rpm.
He did have a spate of installing virtual machines, but has since deleted them all

[Pyro]

Sounds good.

Virtual machines shouldn’t cause any issues, but if he was downloading viruses or the like there is the possibility for them to leak through to the host machine. I hope he wasn’t doing that anyway though.

[Penfold7]

Don’t think he was…???

[Penfold7]

Here are the Speccy Snapshot. PSU is pretty new and is a Seasonic Core GC-650. Recommended on here actually.

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/YUCfrhsKyL6oTpNmni7cFpj

I am coming to the conclusion that the issues all stem from a poor slow HDD and a Windows installation that needs refreshing.
Not sure why the SPeccy uptimes for Windows states Current Uptime 168,340 sec (1 d, 22 h, 45 m, 40 s). Ive only just switched on the system.

[Pyro]

Windows saves a snapshot of your computer when you power it down, this setting is called fast startup. You should be restarting the computer (through the power menu) once every couple days or so - this will fix a lot of common issues.

Let’s get the basics out of the way first and just throw some housekeeping at it before you pull the trigger on a new drive (which I truly do believe is the stem of your issue).

This is my laundry list, it’s a good starting point for troubleshooting and should get you an idea what’s going on:

1. Try running the following programs, also try to keep at least 25-30% of your disks as free space.

Run Disk Cleanup (check all the boxes) this will delete things such as your recycling bin, so make sure you don’t have any files you want to keep.

Run Defragment and Optimize Drives, run this on your drives.

These will free up some space, but you may need to relocate/delete files to reach the suggested free space.

1. Disable any overclocking or changes to power/performance settings

Undo any overclocking you may have done (if any)

Settings > System > Power and sleep > Additional power settings
Make sure your power plan is set to balanced, high performance/ultimate performance is only beneficial on gaming laptops where it needs that extra boost.

1. Check for Operating System Corruption

Right click on the Windows logo in the bottom left and select Windows Powershell (Admin)
Run these three commands separately:

[COLOR=rgb(184, 49, 47)]sfc /scannow

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

These will take a while to run, do not close out of Powershell while they are running, if one fails then move onto the next and then loop back around.

Note: It doesn’t hurt to make a system backup before you make all these changes, save any important files of folders. While these changes shouldn’t cause any issues, better to be safe than sorry.

1. Unplug unnecessary devices.

If you have a gamepad, extra monitor, external hard drive/flash drive, or anything that is not essential to using the computer plugged in, unplug it.

Once you have completed all of these tasks, restart it (using the restart option in the power menu) and re-test.[/COLOR]

[Penfold7]

Hi. Thanks for looking.
Going in order, he does reboot his pc every so often.

1.. I’ve already run disk cleanup, and deleted junk. I ran defrag this afternoon, although windows reported only 4% fragmentation. There is also over 300gb of free space on the current drive
2.. There is nothing over clocked on his system
3.. I had already tried the dism command and SFC, both found no errors.
4.. There is only a mouse, keyboard, hdmi cable headphones and an ethernet cable plugged in.

Looking like a new HDD then,with a nice fresh install of Windows.

Thanks mate for looking

[xrobwx71]

In addition to @Pyro 's post- If I may, I’d like to add some suggestions:

You can use the enhanced Windows Disk Cleaner by pressing the Windows key and the letter r together. This should open a run dialogue.
In the Run dialogue, copy and paste this, Cleanmgr /sageset:65535 & Cleanmgr/sagerun:65535 into it and hit enter. You’ll have a few more options to check. This will safely free even more space. Delte old Windows Update files, safely cleans the WinSxS folder, etc.

Also, hit the start button, type cmd, press CTRL + SHIFT + Enter. This will open an elevated command prompt.
In this prompt, copy and paste powercfg -h off and enter. Reboot. This turns off hibernation/fast startup, deletes the hiberfil.sys file which can grow huge and get corrupted.
You can turn it back on if you think you need it (I have it off on all my PC’s at home and work) by following the same directions and instead copy/paste powercfg -h on

[Penfold7]

Thanks. Will give that a go

[Penfold7]

OK. Did this, system still takes around 10mins from the BIOS beep till the disk activity has reduced enough for the system to be useable.

[Pyro]

Just to clarify, you can see the disk at 100% utilization when you log on?

[Penfold7]

Yes. It stays this was for at least 10mins. Cpu and memory utilisation are relatively low at this point

[Pyro]

I think we can safely call it the drive at this point. A quality SATA SSD would serve you well. >500GB for your windows install.

Let’s double check with some others so we can exhaust all of our options before pulling the trigger.
@Rustys @Bruce @PeterOz @Bastet