Slow PC Bootup - Help find the cause

Well, I'm one for PC maintenance and fairly good with keeping up to shape. There's something I may have missed which is why I wanted to brainstorm with the rest of you here.

However, I feel my PC boots a bit too slow for it's specs. Specifications:

OS: Windows 10 x64
MB: Gigabyte GA-Z97M-D3H
CPU: Intel Core i7 4790
RAM: G.Skill Ares F3-1600C9D-8GAO (x2) 16GB
OS-HDD: WD10EZEX-00BN5A0
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 750W B2
GPU: EVGA 1060GTX 6GB

I have done all the usual stuff as well:

- Checked startup items and only kept required ones.
- Virus and Malware Scans
- Removed unwanted apps
- Defrag (set weekly)
- Reinstalled Windows 10 (clean install)

Even after reinstalling Windows 10 the bootup didn't improve at all.. What else can I check that would impact this?

 

Hi! Your best bet right now would be to insert a SSD and install windows in it. Keep your HDD for storage or maybe installing apps if loading speed isn't so important with them. It takes only seconds to boot from a SSD. Another thing that would come up to my mind is that your HDD might be starting to have a lot of bad sectors, in that case it would be better to buy a newer one before it becomes unreadable.

 

What happend is most likely the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. As already mentioned you should install a SSD and see if everything goes back to normal again.

 

im having my new PC built arround that, only needed programs are on the SSD, like windows, and everything else on the HDD's

 

I was thinking it was down to the hard disk. I've been planning SSD for some time now. However I have heard of how short their lifespan are. Not sure how true that is. Anyone verify?

 

It's more reliable than a spinning drive and heaps faster. I wouldn't even run Windows 10 if I didn't have an SSD
Check the warranty on Samsung EVO Pro

 

The first SSDs on the market tended to have a short lifespan many years ago, but their technology has been improved in the long run and even now, SSDs that aren't so recent can last for many years under normal use. They're perfect for booting up the OS and apps, but for tasks like writing files all day long non stop during months, then it's recomended to use a HDD because SSDs only have a maximum number of rewrites on their sectors before they become read-only.

 

Another downside of SSDs is that they're not designed for archiving for very long periods of time, if you leave a SSD with data, they'll loose it if you don't power it up once every few years, I don't remember well if it would take like 5 years or more to start losing data, unlike HDDs which can last even longer. SSDs are intended for regular use and once you jump ship to them, you'll never want to return to HDDs except for those 2 reasons, constant abusive writting or archiving.

 

M.2 is another variant of SSD, which depending on the model you would choose it could benefit from PCI-Express bandwidth (lightning fast loading times!) or SATA3 bandwidth (way much better than HDDs but not close to PCI-E) even if they're attached directly to the motherboard with their own connector or with a PCI-Express adapter. They're a little more expensive than SSDs that connect to SATA3 ports but they're smaller than a ram stick. And at last there's the SSDs in PCI-Express form factor, super fast and super expensive, not for the average consumer.

 

SSD lifespan is as good as you want it to be. It doesn't suffer from mechanical failure but has X number of read/writes before it shits out. This number is still very large and only really becomes a problem when you regularly move huge amounts of data into them or around them

It will likely last as long as an HDD will. The speed increase at the cost of space is worth it. Some people even get one just to install OS stuff exclusively just because its the most frequently read part of an installation.

M.2 is another option, but your mobo would need to support it OR you go for a PCI solution

 

Windows 10 has basically made it necessary to use an SSD. Any computer I installed 10 on without an SSD became a hard drive thrashing mess.

 

I know everybody is talking about Win 10 and SSD's, but i would suggest testing the Ram with memtest86 as well.

Let it run for some hours and see if there's any issues.

 

You may also want to remove all unnecessary USB devices. A bad USB disk, for example, can also make Windows stall at boot (as it tries to access the disk).

You may also want to check your SATA port settings in the BIOS. If it is set to IDE emulation, then some features like NCQ won't be available.

IMO, a SSD was already necessary for Windows 7. The Japanese promotional poster for Windows 7 already recommended a SSD.

Other than a SSD being faster, you would also be connecting it to a different SATA channel. As a result, it can help with throughput (i.e. when something unforseen happens... like Windows Update) if your OS and games/other stuff are stored on different disks.

Before I moved onto a SSD+HDD combo, I noticed that if Windows hogs up the HDD, then everything else slows down too. Windows Updates will eventually slow down as the OS matures, but for now Windows 10 is still quite new. There's also patch Tuesday, so you can roughly eyeball when new patches will come out.

EDIT: Oh yeah, just in case you don't know about it: if/when you do get a SSD, connect it to the 6Gbit port because some mainboards have a mixture of 3Gbit and 6Gbit ports. I don't think this would matter for HDDs because they're slow.

 

My system has kind of similar specs to yours (except the GPU), and it boots Windows 10 in seconds. I'm using an SSD, though.

 

Thanks for all the insight so far guys. I'll test my RAM and keep an eye out for an SSD. I've been meaning to get one for some time as well.

I'm currently running an insider release of Windows 10, but even before I did that I had the same issues.

EDIT: I updated my MB BIOS to the latest ROM. PC boots a little quicker but nothing to say it's 'fix' or 'as it should be'. I'll get an SSD and report back when I do.

 

Ya, you could try some systematic testing by unplugging everything and booting, then plug the keyboard in & boot, then the mouse etc. and see if it's an attached device causing slowdown.

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Don't hear your HDD clicking upon booting do you? If it's old it might simply be dying, can run chkdsk from the command prompt to investigate or download SeaTools.

SSDs are used in server RAIDs these days, they should be able to last as long as a spindle drive. Anecdotally, of the SSD & spindle HDD I bought 5 years ago the latter died a few weeks back whilst the former keeps on truckin'.

Be sure to turn your scheduled defrag off for the SSD if you get one - don't need to defrag those.

 

Nope, my Hard Disk is healthy and rather new. Close to 2.5 years old.

 

2.5 years is no where near new.

 

I would use GSmartControl to test the current hdd
https://gsmartcontrol.sourceforge.io/home/index.php/Downloads

 

Or CrystalDiskInfo. Acronis also has a disk monitor program that you can leave running that'll let you know if one of your HDD's is starting to die. There's other programs and such that do the same thing, just Acronis's solution is super easy to use.

Also yeah SSDs can potentially last a looooooong time. There's of course the usual problems that can cause early hardware failure and such, but based on this endurance test http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-two-freaking-petabytes
The earliest failure was after like ~700TB of writes, to give perspective to that number on my main computer that I use everyday that would mean my SSD would last 68 years. It will probably die for some other reason before then lol