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Windows 10's startup is painful on an older PC like mine. I have a AMD fx8120 on a Sata2 AM3 motherboard with a regular sata2 1tb spinning hard disk. I need to wait 10-15 minutes after logging on before I can click the mouse because of windows horrible startup time. I don't mind that the disk is laggy most of the time (disk-intensive apps like docker and wsl2 are unacceptably slow however) but its unusual that it so slow for so long every single day only at startup and then it's absolutely fine. I'm sure it's probably one of the core windows services I can probably live without, just don't know how to find out which one. I have disabled all startup apps, and it is just as slow in any of the three local profiles I have on this machine.

I realise that other posts say all the same ideas (I've followed every step in every guide) all come back to the same conclusion of swapping out the hard disk for a ssd, but at this time I can't afford to buy a newspaper let alone a SSD, and amazon/ebay both take 2 full months to deliver anything. I've disabled the garbage windows search that I never use, the 'sysmain' service, mucked about with ahci settings, etc. How do I log to a meaningful file the disk process usage over the first 10 minutes after a logon?

frumbert
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  • Defragmenting the disk could help a bit. – davidgo Oct 04 '20 at 04:28
  • Stop shutting your computer down. Windows can run for days or weeks without reboots. Use standby or hibernate if you have to. – Appleoddity Oct 04 '20 at 04:43
  • The main task after a full restart that uses so much HDD I/O is a (very necessary) "brief" virus scan. As others state, use *hibernation* or *sleep* for quicker restarts. Alternatively, other operating systems often reboot *much* faster, particularly on older PC's. On one laptop, I find a full reboot in Windows takes ~7 minutes to finish scan and get up to speed; on that laptop, Ubuntu boots in ~1.5 minutes, without need for virus scan. – DrMoishe Pippik Oct 04 '20 at 05:16
  • You should also check your hard disk for errors with your favourite SMART program. – DavidPostill Oct 04 '20 at 09:23
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    Also, manufacturers save money (lowers your purchase cost) by using slow hard drives. If that is the case, you can follow the earlier advice to suspend overnight but perhaps stick with suspend and not hibernate as some computers do not restart properly from hibernate. I use suspend successfully. – John Oct 04 '20 at 11:41
  • How much installed memory do you have? – Moab Oct 04 '20 at 13:58
  • Seagate make rubbish hard drives. They always fail. Check if your hard drive is made by Seagate in Device Manager. – desbest Oct 25 '20 at 23:23

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Your disk should automatically de-fragment the drive at least once a week, if not everyday. Considering your budget constraints, hibernation/suspend would be your best option.

If you wanted to dive into it:

Open task manager > processes > performance tab > click the "Disk" > right click on the most used process and select "Details". that should take you directly to the process/service that is causing all the trouble. I would check again a few hours later and see if the same process/service is the culprit, you could upload a photo and I might be able to find more information for you.

I hope this is helpful, if not, I apologize.

Foxtrot105
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