Windows 8.1 Long pause during boot

[geranium]

Hello All:
The system:
Asus Vivobook S550CB, Core i7, 8GB RAM, 1TB Hybrid Toshiba HDD

The issue:
The boot time is really long (several minutes) in both UEFI and Legacy modes. Safe mode (of any variety) boots really slowly too.
Immediately after POST, the hard drive reads quickly and then goes inactive for 2-3 minutes (no activity on the light). Booting from a Windows Repair USB drive, I get the same pause in disk activity. When it becomes active again, the login screen pops up. What is this delay about? In addition, if the system is put to sleep, upon wakeup, the hard drive stops all activity for a similar period of time, freezing the login screen.

What I've done:
1. Checked CPU temperatures - around 50C
2. Run Malwarebytes, TDSSKiller, RogueKiller, Emsisoft Emergency Kit
3. Removed a bit of malware and adware (not much, nothing too serious)
4. Run SFC
5. Run DISM tool
6. Checked for BIOS updates - it's up to date already
7. Run CHKDSK
8. Checked SMART values on the hard drive - no issues
9. Disabled Hybrid Shutdown
10. Disabled the Qualcomm wireless driver
11. Checked hard drive speed

Now I'm at a loss. I don't know much about the history of this machine, but apparently it used to boot in a reasonable fashion (System Restore fails by the way - not many points present anyway).

I'd love to hear some ideas on this!
Thanks!

 

[FremontPC]

Is Intel RST installed? I've had that give really quirky results, including long boot times.

 

[geranium]

Yes it is. Let me look into that...

 

[geranium]

Well, it's definitely an improved experience without Intel RST driver - there's still a weird 40 second pause in disk activity during boot (and almost 2 minutes when booting from a USB Windows Recovery Drive), but the system can wake from sleep without freezing which is great improvement. Thanks FremontPC! Any ideas for further avenues of investigation are welcome.

 

[Larry Sabo]

What happens with another HDD that's not a hybrid? I have had a crappy ADATA SSD that does what you describe; RMA'd it and the refurbished drive does the same thing. Doesn't happen with a Samsung 850 Pro.

 

[FremontPC]

How does it do with a safemode boot?

 

[nlinecomputers]

Bootlogs? Need to bootup with bootlogging enabled and then take a look at the timestamps of each action. That will clue you in on what's hanging.

 

[geranium]

Yes, I was about to try another hard drive, but it had the same behaviour when booting from a USB flash drive, so it seemed like the issue was independent of the drive. It's still a possibility though. I was wishing for a firmware update for the drive, but Toshiba didn't seem to have one.

Safe mode boot has the identical delay - weird!

I've had to return the machine now, so I can't experiment any more on it. It sleeps and wakes perfectly now (with the Intel RST driver gone), so it's much more useable than it was. Thanks for the ideas!

 

[geranium]

Mmm bootlogging... I did do that, but the log had only the initial timestamp for the boot process. That's a new area for me, so I'm not sure how to get more information out of the process, ie, timestamps of each action.

 

[FremontPC]

Safe mode boot has the identical delay - weird!

Sorry, missed that in the OP. So safemode was slow even after uninstalling Intel RST?

Did you check for BIOS updates via LiveUpdate (or whatever tool Asus issues these days) or did you go to the downloads section for that system on Asus's site and take a look about? It seems the update tools provided by the OEM (any OEM) are becoming more and more marginal.

At what point in the boot process did it appear to stall, especially while in Legacy? Did it seem to hang on the BIOS splash screen?

Booting from the USB drive, that can be a bit of a wildcard, but if it seemed to hang at the same spot...

 

[geranium]

Yes, booting safe mode stayed slow.

As far as the BIOS update, I looked at the most recent version available on the Asus site.

The whole startup was a little wonky:
- on power up it would sit on a black screen for maybe 8 seconds,
- then it would throw up the splash screen;
- then (in legacy) the boot logo would pop up with a few seconds of hard drive activity
- then the hard drive goes inactive for some time (about 40 seconds); Windows loading circle keeps circling all the time
- then hard drive activity again and all's normal from here on in

I thought that maybe there was something in the bcd store that was telling the bootloader to wait for something??? but everything looked normal in there.

 

[FremontPC]

I'd be stuck at swapping parts here, trying to see if I could get a different response. HDD first, RAM next.

You've covered a lot of bases and I appreciate the detail.

Odd that it gets into 8.1 at all in Legacy.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I had a windows 7 machine in that acted this way. Even with a clean install, it was like a 5 minute or more boot with a hard drive that tested good. Windows actually picked up an updated AHCI or chipset driver of some type for the board, installed that and went to like 30 seconds. So I would say update the chipset etc.

 

[A/CPC]

Late to post, and you've mentioned that you returned the machine to its owner. Given your efforts, It strikes me to be hardware related. It's not on your list so I'll suggest the following (FWIW):

0. Disable bios splash screen
1. Remove battery, run on power only (had a dell laptop that would take forever to start...had a bad battery...removing it returned boot times to normal)
2. Turn off usb in bios, disable usb controllers
3. Create image of original drive, restore it to a different drive
4. quickie fresh install on same drive, quickie fresh install on different drive.

 

[HCHTech]

Also late to the party - is it trying to find a network drive perchance?

 

[geranium]

Thanks for the thoughts. I'll file them for the future...