Windows 10 slow to boot

I tend to think it's probably the antivirus, but here's some things to try if you haven't already.

Get a copy of Malwarebytes (free version), run it on the system and see if it finds anything.

Get a copy of Spybot - Search and Destroy (free version), run it on the system and see if it finds anything.

Get a copy of Microsoft Autoruns and see what's being called at startup.  You'll probably find all sorts of junk that doesn't need to be there.

Check the Device Manager settings for the disk drive controllers and confirm that they are DMA.  Unlikely, but possible that they were set to PIO.

See if the hard drive was set up 4K sectors or in legacy mode with 512 byte sectors.  Drives run slower in legacy mode.

Check to see if prefetch is enabled for boot (this is a Registry setting).  If not, enable it.

Drastic:

If the user doesn't use Microsoft Networking features, disable them on the network connection and unload them.  Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP ditto.

Disable unused services.

Clear the prefetch folder, reboot three times to let the system reload the prefetch files and see if there's any improvement.

Thanks Dr. Klahn
Is prefetch the same as Superfetch ? Because I disabled Superfetch

Prefetch and Superfetch are different.

Prefetch stores images of commonly used programs so that the image can be preloaded without initialization.  It can speed up load times significantly.  If you haven't run into it before, best to read up on it before trying to change anything; "doing it wrong" can have bad consequences.

Microsoft claims that there is no need to clean or retune prefetch files.  In general I have found that to be correct.

I would try the Windows Performance Toolkit and analyse the boot process. My initial thinking is that the 1 TB HDD if not a SSD is the limiting factor.  

what is the problem with the user not explicitly turning off the laptop?  What about using hibernate vs a complete shutdown?

I have to admit that the standard boot process is quite long; unusually so.
I believe that Hibernate would be an acceptable middle ground but I'm not the user,
As a perfectionist I would prefer to understand what is causing his notebook boot process to be slower than normal

How large is the OST or PST file for MS Outlook?

If it is over 12GB, you need to change HDD to SSD.

His OST file is 1GB in size

What is the build no of Win 10?

Slowness is only a symptom and there are numerous causes.

It can be a driver or antivirus software issue.

Or

The user has installed many apps which will auto-start on boot or logon.

The boot time is not exceptionally slow. I just turned of my Desktop (my X1 has an SSD drive).  1 TB HDD, i5 CPU.

Starting from computer OFF, turn on to login screen: just under 1 minute.
Log in to all services running and Outlook running: 90 seconds
Smooth running: 3 to 4 minutes.

Background and Windows processes running on the above machine: about 170.

My X1 starts faster with SSD but smooth running arrives after about 2 minutes. Background and windows processes: about 215

Many of the processes on a laptop relate to power management, suspend functions, battery, screen management (to save battery) and so on.

Rather that remove processes that may help your user and assuming that it is not laden with viruses (you need to check this) the only practical way to speed up this laptop is with an SSD drive. It still takes 2 to 2 1/2 minutes to get to smooth running.

Start the machine, get a coffee, come back and it should be running. Waiting for Godot is not helpful

Make sure it is set to AHCI mode in BIOS.
Uninstall Antivirus and retest.
Disable all startup programs and retest.
Disable all Services and retest, Except Microsoft services.

Create a new User account and switch into it and retest.

Godot came by yesterday and picked up his laundry.  On the way out the door he said "If Windows 10 is so great, how come it don't boot faster than Windows 3.1?"

I was unable to answer this.

Answer:  There is a lot more going on in Windows 10 than Windows 3.1 which was just a shell running on DOS 6.3

Next time I see him I'll tell him that.

Run the HDTune benchmark.  If there are large "dropouts" of data rate then the hard drive is likely the cause.  If so, I highly recommend it be replaced.  (A dropout would be a transfer rate falling to 2-3MBps and staying there for a bit of time).

As @David Johnson said. The best way to identify the root cause of this delay is taking a boot trace with WPT.

Here is a tutorial https://zinetek.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/how-to-use-wpr-to-record-boot-sequence/

you can try these options :
1- boot into safe mode - is it also slow?
2-run msconfig, and click on disable all in startup tab - reboot to test

***the best way to speed it up is replacing the old HDD with an SSD
check if he needs a 1 TB drive, the smaller ones are not so costly

It is morning. I started my laptop, then got my juice, attended to some things, picked the morning paper from the stop, and by the time I got here all was smooth. I will suspend from here on in until the end of the day.

I do not shut down my desktop computer and no need to wait at all.

I will only restart it when there is a windows update.

My own desktop is on 24x7 - same as above.

and i restart my desktop 4-6 times a day; whenever i finish my tasks for a moment, i shut it down
it boots in 20 sec ?  so why keep it on??

Faster as noted above. Also we work differently

it boots in 20 sec ?  so why keep it on??

Remote access via Google Remote Desktop.

This computer is practically brand new (two months)
I have older PCs that boot up quicker than this one under Windows 10

Install Autoruns by Microsoft and you will know why.

https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/31108/Resetting-a-Windows-10-PC-turned-into-a-Nightmare-from-Audio-Problem.html

I suggest, then, that you back up the machine, and install Windows 10 fresh. Update Windows 10 and all drivers / BIOS first and test start up and shut down. Then add applications testing as you go.

i still suggest to look if he's willing to swap in an SSD - when i did, i was astonished; it was simply by far the best investment in pc devices i ever had

You all mention SSD and I agree this is a very interesting solution when performance is at stake
But I can't suggest to a client that we replace the new hard drive on his new laptop; it just doesn't make sense

I will try the uninstall reinstall approach; I suppose that restoring the partition using Lenovo's ready to restore package isn't advisable ?

Did you run HDTune benchmark on it?  It's about the ONLY way that I know how to test for this one failure mode - which doesn't show up on other tests.

I recently purchased a high-end Lenovo workstation myself.  It arrived with a bad hard drive.  The failure mechanism was quite odd.  It tested OK.  But when I tried to transfer all my files onto it, it would fail.  It just didn't "like" large data transfers.  They replaced it quickly enough.
My point is that there are failure mechanisms that aren't obvious.  
I wouldn't uninstall reinstall before looking into this sort of failure.

We live in an era when users don't want to suffer any downtime thus one has to find a way to access the user's computer in his absence
It is rather unfortunate that in the present case I cannot wake the notebook up because it uses a wireless interface

I will try your proposed solutions/procedures and keep you posted

thanks

He has had it for about two months now and he is disappointed by the device's performance, especially during boot up which takes approximately two minutes, and then another two minutes to get Outlook 2016 going

Unless the user is only a standard user who has no local admin rights to install anything, the above is pretty normal as two months are pretty normal for any user to try to install anything on his or her own which makes the computer running lower and lower.

Especially, there are many "free" tools which are distributed via online ads which claim to be able to make your computer faster and smoother and the user did try them without telling you.

We has a Lenovo computer of similar spec (1TB HDD) which is domain joint. It is still running fast after 6 months from its purchase.

Computer problem is normally a user problem if you cannot restrict the user and the user can do anything on the computer which makes it running slower and slower.

Without analysing the boot process and finding and eliminating the offending items that are slowing down the boot process there really isn't much we can do to help you.
Apparently this laptop comes with a 5400 RPM hard drive, good battery performance, but terrible for performance. https://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-320-17ikb-17-3-core-i5-7200u-8-gb-ram-1-tb-hdd/specs/
What you can do is change some services to delayed start, from task manager go through the start up items and disable what isn't critical. After that you get what you get. As mentioned before an SSD in this day and age is pretty much not a nice to have but a need to have item.

Take a boot trace and then we can talk solutions...

Just ran HDTune a couple of times and got the same result each time:

Anyway, there are hardware diagnosing tool in Lenovo computer. Run the test before you make a decisio for the next step.

Spent some time this morning testing the notebook boot up process

Removed NVIDIA drivers and NOD32 antivirus : no impact on the boot up time

Time for Lenovo logo to disappear : 40s
Time for Windows 10 login screen to appear : 1m45s
Time for Outlook to start up (automatically) : 3m

@Yann Shukkor;

What you can do to troubleshoot that the right way and get answers to your problem is;

- Download and Install windows Performance Toolkit https://goo.gl/igAC21 . Choose the package corresponding to your Windows version.
- Record a trace using Windows Performance Recorder using these options: https://justpaste.it/1dm88
- Compress the resulting file
- Share it through https://www.transfernow.net/en/ or any other file sharing platform.

I'll analyze your trace file and give you a feedback.

You can find here a tutorial on how to take a boot trace using WPT http://zinetek.com/2015/12/16/how-to-use-wpr-to-record-boot-sequence/

See you

I ran the Windows Performance Recorder this morning and here is the result : www.transfernow.net/338q46y974f8

Hi,

I can't open the RAR file, the archive seems to be corrupted. Please, compress it with zip or 7-zip and share it again...

See you.

remove/uninstall CCSDK.EXE in the lenovo program folder
Eset ekm.exe is #2
Adobe Desktop Services is the major post-boot culprit
uninstall or make teamviewer on demand
do you neeed https://software.intel.com/en-us/documentation/sgx-sdk-installation-guide/install-sgx-platform-software
Phase Name    Winlogon Init
Time    157.553780478s
Duration (s)    282.776721347

Been playing around with WPA this afternoon; neat tool
I especially appreciate the presence of Profiles in the catalog directory
should be known to all, no exceptions