Why does it take a few minutes for my start bar and desktop screen to show up after logging in.

[Windows Central Question]

When my laptop(HP Spectre) booted after running CHKDSK I was able to log in just fine but after the login I had a black screen with just my cursor. I am able to open task manager and open programs using that, I tried running explorer.exe but that gave no immediate results. Desktop starts working after a few minutes but fails every time I restart my computer which makes it an awfully inconvenient wait every time I use my laptop.

 

[DOGC_Kyle]

Any Startup items listed in Task Manager?

When you're waiting for it to load the shell, check the Performance tab of Task Manager. What are the percentages of CPU and Disk C:? Anything orange or red (high numbers) under the Processes tab? That could help narrow it down.

You can run a hardware test on HP systems by holding F2 when the system is booting (if F2 doesn't work, hold shift while clicking Restart from lock screen or Start menu, click Troubleshoot > Advanced options > UEFI firmware > Restart). There are options to run a full system test. Try that and see if it passes.

If the hardware test passes, you could try Windows reset, which will reinstall Windows but keep your files. Probably not the most convenient option if you have a lot of apps you'd need to reinstall, but if you don't, this would almost certainly help.