Incredibly Slow Boot-Up Following Windows 10 1709 Update

[Zinou]

Can you record the boot trace on an exernal usb disk. I mean in the Windows Performance choose an external storage for the boot trace file destination.

[bethjm]

I will see if I can find a suitable USB stick. Is it something to do with my storage then and ought I be concerned?

[Zinou]

This message means that the buffers where the wpr record events are filled more quickly than they are transferred to the disk to be recorder in the trace file.

The 5400 rpm disk, alone, can can't justify that. I think there is High Disk I/O happening in there !

you can try to take a boot trace using the following command line; I'll use a min of providers to not saturate the buffers:

xbootmgr -trace boot -traceflags base+latency+dispatcher -stackwalk profile+cswitch+readythread -notraceflagsinfilename -noPrepReboot -postbootdelay 20 -resultPath C:\TEMP

[Zinou]

You can also find boot traces generated by the xbootmgr.exe command, under your profil named boot_BASE+CSWITCH_1.etl or bootPrep_BASE+CSWITCH_6.etl

Compare these with the initial boot trace to see how much improvement you made ...

[LoDImas]

Dear Zinou,

I read your excelent answer to an issue from Bethjm. I think I am in similar position as him. I got the same trace with WPR as you requested him, but I must confess I don't know how to interpret it. Would you accept me to send you my trace to analyze it. I spent already several weeks with this slow boot up, and I am really desesperate.

Thank you!

Dimas

[Zinou]

Hi,

Ok, upload your trace file after compressing it on https://www.transfernow.net/

[Zinou]

Hi, at the early boot phase, Windows is trying to validate a driver signature. To confirm this assumption, you have to disable boot drivers signature verification just for the test. Here is a tutorial: https://www.howtogeek.com/167723/how-to-disable-driver-signature-verification-on-64-bit-windows-8.1-... If the system boots faster, that will confirm the assumption. To identify the guilty driver, you have to use signtool.exe to check all your drivers' signatures. I'll send you a powershell script you'll run to identify the unsigned driver.

[LoDImas]

Hi,

I did the test with the drivers check disabled. It still takes the same long time to boot. Anyway, I will try to obtain the signtool to check if there is some suspicious driver.

[LoDImas]

Hi,

I checked drivers signatures with sigverif (a Windows standard utility). I guess it is somehow equivalent to signtool as for verifying if drivers are signed or not. The only driver thats is showed as not sgned is:

File: c:\windows\system32\driverst\rtsper.sys
Modified: 23/8/2018
File Type: System file
Version: 10.0.17134.21306
Status: Not Signed
Catalog: N/A

[Zinou]

Are you sure you have correctly disabled the driver signature verification?

Can you take a boot trace while the driver signature verification is disabled ?