Windows 10 takes 5 minutes to boot!?

[GenerousGeorge]

My Windows 10 PC takes 3 minutes to load the time (lower right corner) and another 2 minutes to load Google Chrome (I clicked the Chrome icon as soon as it appeared).

I have no idea why it happens, I keep my PC clean (scanned it for viruses (Avast and Malwarebytes), cleaned it (CCleaner, Wise Registry Cleaner), defragmented (Auslogics Disk Defrag) and at the end checked for latest drivers (Driver Booster and Drivers Cloud).
I tried to troubleshoot it, looked into "startup tab" in "Task Manager", checked "Event Viewer" - lots of exclamation marks and question marks (solved almost all of them, it didn't do anything...)

PC specs:
-CPU- Intel G1620 2x2.7GHz
-MOBO- MSI H61M P20 G3
-HDD- Segate 160GB
-RAM- No idea.. DDR3 4GB
-GPU- GTX 560Ti (Overclocked)
-PSU- Chieftec 500W
-WIN 10 PRO x64

That one HDD is split into two partitions:
-Boot- 50GB - 19GB Free
-Everything else- 110GB - 34GB Free

I hope that someone will be able to help me. Can't think of any more things that you would like to know... oh, yeah the OS was upgraded from win 7 and I deleted the old OS, but it's not the cause, because even with win 7 the boot time was the same.. I was too lazy to do anything with it.

Ps. Sorry for any mistakes, but English is not my native language.

 

[The Extreme G]

Your HDD is the culprit. It's just slow, period. Now, you can either look into buying a better performing HDD or invest in an SSD. That will require you to do some research to determine what suits your needs best.

 

[Demian Mioc]

You have CPU that is 3 years old, and you have old HDD worth 13$. It would be smart to buy new decent CPU and new HDD or SSD which is expensive but worth every penny. Smart thing to do would be to check and replace thermal paste, maybe PC heats too much and because of that it freezes and slows down. Old HDD causes slower Boot times and overall performance.
Another thing to check are incompatible drivers which are slowing down your PC. I did install Windows 10 on Acer TravelMate 2410, 6 years old with 1 GB RAM. It run slow until I disabled WiFi driver which was incompatible with Windows 10, driver was supported only for XP. After that it ran as amazing as 6 years old laptop can do with Windows 10 x86.
I'd recommend you to do a clean Windows 10 install, but before you do that make sure that all your files are backed up and safe. After clean install, try to use Windows Defender, it's faster than other Antivirus software in my experience and does not slow down as others. Do not install stuff like CC Cleaner, various Device boosters and Registry cleaners, they will surely mess up your device and slow it down in best scenario! Windows 10 has inbuilt tools that are enough good for average user. When clean install is done connect your PC to the internet and let it download stuff and drivers automatically without 3rd party software. Hope it helps!

 

[DavidinCT]

Yea, a SSD would help but, the CPU itself is slow. Watch the deal sites, I have seen some good name 120gb-240gb go for $40-90. The best investment you can make in a PC.

I took one of those old HP netbooks, Windows7 took over 4 min to load and was not usable till about 7 min....Dropped a USED 60gb SSD I got on ebay for $12, it loads in about 30seconds and is usable in under 1 min.. very impressive results for a POS computer (I use for 1 task, that I need a "laptop" for)

 

[xandros9]

I want to suspect the hard drive.

I had a 2008 laptop that had a respectable 30 second boot with Windows 7 and an SSD.

Some time later and now on 8.1, I switched to an older hard drive for it and boot speed went down the tubes. It worked fine once it booted but before that point it was five minutes to start.

 

[GenerousGeorge]

You have CPU that is 3 years old, and you have old HDD worth 13$. It would be smart to buy new decent CPU and new HDD or SSD which is expensive but worth every penny. Smart thing to do would be to check and replace thermal paste, maybe PC heats too much and because of that it freezes and slows down. Old HDD causes slower Boot times and overall performance.
Another thing to check are incompatible drivers which are slowing down your PC. I did install Windows 10 on Acer TravelMate 2410, 6 years old with 1 GB RAM. It run slow until I disabled WiFi driver which was incompatible with Windows 10, driver was supported only for XP. After that it ran as amazing as 6 years old laptop can do with Windows 10 x86.
I'd recommend you to do a clean Windows 10 install, but before you do that make sure that all your files are backed up and safe. After clean install, try to use Windows Defender, it's faster than other Antivirus software in my experience and does not slow down as others. Do not install stuff like CC Cleaner, various Device boosters and Registry cleaners, they will surely mess up your device and slow it down in best scenario! Windows 10 has inbuilt tools that are enough good for average user. When clean install is done connect your PC to the internet and let it download stuff and drivers automatically without 3rd party software. Hope it helps!

The CPU temps are extremely low actually... I'm using speed fan to control the speed of the CPU fan and since then the CPU fan never exceeded 50% of it's speed. On the other hand the CPU is at 25C at idle and 40C at full load (still with the fan at 50%)

I'll look into buying a SSD.. the problem is that my founds aren't very big (actually, there's no founds...), combine that with the country I live in (Poland), where a 250GB SSD costs 340zł (86USD). It's not much of an argument until I point out that the minimal wage is about 1200zł (303USD)... so the SSD would be a freaking 1/4 of it...

Why a 250GB? If I find the money for a 120GB one I would prefer to save for a 250GB and throw that old HDD into the dustbin(not really.. ;p)

Thank you very much for your help. I suspected that it's the hardware, but at the same time there was some hope that somehow, somebody will be able to do something.

 

[Demian Mioc]

The CPU temps are extremely low actually... I'm using speed fan to control the speed of the CPU fan and since then the CPU fan never exceeded 50% of it's speed. On the other hand the CPU is at 25C at idle and 40C at full load (still with the fan at 50%)

I'll look into buying a SSD.. the problem is that my founds aren't very big (actually, there's no founds...), combine that with the country I live in (Poland), where a 250GB SSD costs 340zł (86USD). It's not much of an argument until I point out that the minimal wage is about 1200zł (303USD)... so the SSD would be a freaking 1/4 of it...

Why a 250GB? If I find the money for a 120GB one I would prefer to save for a 250GB and throw that old HDD into the dustbin(not really.. ;p)

Thank you very much for your help. I suspected that it's the hardware, but at the same time there was some hope that somehow, somebody will be able to do something.

You can do this: buy an 120gb ssd and use it as main disk and partition, while using old hdd as a secondary with biger memory. I did that and is awesome. Pc boots in like few seconds, everything is pretty fast. Note that you dont have to buy larger ssd than 120gb, because you only need you OS and software like Chrome and stuff. Use your old hdd in that case for music, video and documents. I have to say that i really feel your pain, though. Im from Croatia. ☺

 

[Monim Al]

I am still using Windows 8.1. I think it is time to move on. I will be using Windows 10 in few days.

 

[Zhenren Zhou]

Do a clean installation.

 

[pankaj981]

Yeah a clean installation should help. Besides if buying a SSD is out of your immediate budget then you can check out some hybrid SSHD for cheap. I would actually suggest investing in a cheap lower capacity SSD (64GB at least) and utilize it as your boot drive and install all other programs on the other existing drive. Rest of your PC's specs are pretty good.