Windows 7 Slow Welcome Screen and Unresponsive Desktop

[BoneyardBrew Member]

I'm not sure if a solution has been found before, as I've tried searching here and on Google and I've come up with nothing.

Anyway, here's my problem. I go to boot into Windows 7 and the boot is rather quick, up until the Welcome Screen. To give a rough estimate on times, once Windows 7 starts loading (the animated flag) until when the screen goes black (right before the Welcome Screen) takes about 12 seconds. Once the welcome screen starts going it takes almost another 10 seconds before it loads. Then when it finally reaches my desktop, the icons on my superbar are white file icons for several seconds then they change back, and my computer continues to be unresponsive for about another 10 seconds after that.

I have tried the usual, including disabling services and making sure nothing is running at startup. This has happened even on a fresh load.

Here are my two questions...

1. Am I achieving a normal boot time for my specs? I have seen several videos where the welcome screen is rather instant, unlike on my system.

2. Is anyone else experiencing a rather unresponsive desktop on boot?

I don't think that my system should have either of these problems, especially the unresponsive desktop for several seconds after boot. XP has neither of these problems, and I am usually able to boot in 15 seconds or so (from memory, I haven't used XP for a while now, but I do know it was much quicker than 7) and reach a usable desktop almost immediately. Other than that, Windows 7 flies on this machine.

Here are my specs if you can't see my signature.

Windows 7 x86 RTM (and x64; I've tried both, no difference)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.66 GHz

Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR-800

BFG GeForce 9800 GT OC 512MB

ST380815AS 80GB SATA 7200RPM (Boot Drive)

Hitachi HDS721515PLA380 160GB SATA 7200RPM (Game/Backup Drive)

Fujitsu MHZ2080BH G2 80GB SATA 5400RPM (Backup Drive)

Thanks!

[Raa]

I wouldn't call it bad, but it's not normal either. Especially for a fresh (clean?) load.

Having those hdds though, that's going to be the trouble there for sure.

[BoneyardBrew Member]

I wouldn't call it bad, but it's not normal either. Especially for a fresh (clean?) load.

Having those hdds though, that's going to be the trouble there for sure.

That's what I was thinking. It doesn't seem horrible by any means, but it's not exactly great either, and the unresponsive desktop is really frustrating.

Having all of them connected at one time, or are you referring to the hard drives themselves being slow? I know the one I am using for my boot drive came out of an HP that didn't have this issue with Vista (I know this is a different OS altogether, but I figured it was worth mentioning).

[BetaAddict]

That's what I was thinking. It doesn't seem horrible by any means, but it's not exactly great either, and the unresponsive desktop is really frustrating.

Having all of them connected at one time, or are you referring to the hard drives themselves being slow? I know the one I am using for my boot drive came out of an HP that didn't have this issue with Vista (I know this is a different OS altogether, but I figured it was worth mentioning).

I have much worse specs than you and it hangs for a few seconds after entering the password. Really irritating. I convinced it is an issue with Windows itself because I have seen it happen across multiple setups.

[Raa]

I haven't seen it happen on any Windows 7 computer with good specs. We run it at work on Netbooks and yes, it can take 10-30 seconds to get to the desktop (depending if your profile has been cached or not), which I think is fair enough.

If your machine/s aren't up to scratch, then thats the cause usually...

[BoneyardBrew Member]

I haven't seen it happen on any Windows 7 computer with good specs. We run it at work on Netbooks and yes, it can take 10-30 seconds to get to the desktop (depending if your profile has been cached or not), which I think is fair enough.

If your machine/s aren't up to scratch, then thats the cause usually...

What are the specs of these good machines? I would like to know for comparison. My machine is by far the best system of the market, but I would consider it pretty powerful.

[Raa]

Well considering I just loaded it on my spare Intel iMac (1st gen) which has 1 (ONE) gb of ram and an 80gb WD hdd in it and it doesn't stall at the login screen, would that answer your question?

The main system I have here (am on it now), is more powerful than the one in your sig without issues. My friend's PC matches most of the specs of yours, and she has no issues either. Different HDD's though, which again, is my suggested culprit.

[BoneyardBrew Member]

Well considering I just loaded it on my spare Intel iMac (1st gen) which has 1 (ONE) gb of ram and an 80gb WD hdd in it and it doesn't stall at the login screen, would that answer your question?

The main system I have here (am on it now), is more powerful than the one in your sig without issues. My friend's PC matches most of the specs of yours, and she has no issues either. Different HDD's though, which again, is my suggested culprit.

Thanks for the quick response.

I may try reloading Windows on a spare 160GB Western Digital Drive. It's around the specs of a WD Blue if I'm not mistaken. Do you think that would be any better?

[Raa]

Remove all the drives from your PC. Put the WD blue in and try it, do a format, load fresh.

I think you'll get good results. Not as good as a Black, but shouldn't be bad either!

Ehh, if you have the cash, splash out on a Raptor - that's what powers my main system. ;)

[wumpus42]

I was having a similar issue on my two Windows7 laptops, one 32bit, one 64bit (I haven't installed it on a non-laptop yet). After logging in the 'Welcome' screen/message would stay there and spin for ~30secs before finally showing me my desktop. I can't remember where I found it on the 'net, but it my issue was caused because I had changed my desktop background to a solid color. Change it to an image... voila! Welcome only lasts 2-3secs. Go figure.

[PurePhoenix]

Guys, for the last time (unless i can be bothered writing this down elsewhere);

MOVE YOUR PAGE FILE.

[Eric Veteran]

The paging file shouldn't be causing this. It's more than likely a hardware issue or a shell extension causing problems.

[still1]

Could be an application too.. Do you have any antivirus installed??? Kaspersky?

I have heard kaspersky has a bug and it will make the desktop unresponsive for a while.

[PurePhoenix]

The paging file shouldn't be causing this. It's more than likely a hardware issue or a shell extension causing problems.

The page file has ALWAYS caused this, even under xp & 2000!

Moving it to another physical hard drive has always sped up windows boot and responsiveness by up to 4 times normal.

Moving it to another partition on the same drive is no good, it has to be on a seperate hdd to windows so you get two lots of HDD bandwidth available to windows.

SSD's are not excluded from this strategy, they're not that much faster than IDE's.

[White Cuban]

Odd, im using the RC(long story, my OEM RTM seems to be f*d so), and it really opens fasttt(but my machine is a beast i5 750 5850HD)

[BoneyardBrew Member]

Could be an application too.. Do you have any antivirus installed??? Kaspersky?

I have heard kaspersky has a bug and it will make the desktop unresponsive for a while.

I have Microsoft Security Essentials installed, but this also happened without any antivirus program installed.

The page file has ALWAYS caused this, even under xp & 2000!

Moving it to another physical hard drive has always sped up windows boot and responsiveness by up to 4 times normal.

Moving it to another partition on the same drive is no good, it has to be on a seperate hdd to windows so you get two lots of HDD bandwidth available to windows.

SSD's are not excluded from this strategy, they're not that much faster than IDE's.

I tried this, and the boot times were actually worse with the page file on a different drive.

Remove all the drives from your PC. Put the WD blue in and try it, do a format, load fresh.

I think you'll get good results. Not as good as a Black, but shouldn't be bad either!

Ehh, if you have the cash, splash out on a Raptor - that's what powers my main system. ;)

I think that's what I'm going to end up trying. I don't have enough money to drop on a Raptor right now, but I wish I did :(.

Here are the times I recorded using my iPod Touch's stopwatch.

Page File on C: Drive

21 seconds to Welcome Screen

32 seconds to Desktop

38 seconds to Responsive Desktop

Page File on Seperate Drive

36 seconds to Welcome Screen

48 seconds to Desktop

57 seconds to Responsive Desktop

[winrez]

The only thing that I have seen anything that has done this was a client of mine installed AVG ontop of MSE which was corrected by removing AVG and reinstalling MSE

I would open the System Configuration Utility and goto the startup tab and uncheck each non microsoft program one by one and restart until you find the offending software

[BoneyardBrew Member]

The only thing that I have seen anything that has done this was a client of mine installed AVG ontop of MSE which was corrected by removing AVG and reinstalling MSE

I would open the System Configuration Utility and goto the startup tab and uncheck each non microsoft program one by one and restart until you find the offending software

I only have two startup programs, which include MSE and my Logitech Setpoint software for my mouse. I hadn't even installed setpoint until a week ago, and this problem was happening prior to that.

[Fish]

Page File on C: Drive

21 seconds to Welcome Screen

32 seconds to Desktop

38 seconds to Responsive Desktop

Page File on Seperate Drive

36 seconds to Welcome Screen

48 seconds to Desktop

57 seconds to Responsive Desktop

That's quite a noticeable effect, and would lead me to think that maybe it's this second drive that's causing the problem. I'd certainly try just using one HDD; removing the others, and format/re-install. If you've got time, repeat this for all your drives to try and see if one drive is particularly slower than the others.

[BoneyardBrew Member]

That's quite a noticeable effect, and would lead me to think that maybe it's this second drive that's causing the problem. I'd certainly try just using one HDD; removing the others, and format/re-install. If you've got time, repeat this for all your drives to try and see if one drive is particularly slower than the others.

I believe I tried disconnecting the other drives and using only the one, but it can't hurt to try again. I'll let you know if that helps at all.

If that doesn't make a difference I will try using the other drive I was talking about earlier.

[Fish]

One other thing that occurs to me... It may seem obvious, but have you checked that you have SATA drivers installed? I know when I installed 7 it was running OK-ish, but ran much better when I went and got the proper drivers from the Dell (in my case) website. In fact, I had to grab quite a few drivers for various hardware before everything was working just right.

[still1]

I believe I tried disconnecting the other drives and using only the one, but it can't hurt to try again. I'll let you know if that helps at all.

If that doesn't make a difference I will try using the other drive I was talking about earlier.

Can you look at the Cpu resource usage in task manager?

[thedamn316]

It happens to me too, on a fresh install, I guess I have to live it

I have:

QX9650

2x2 Gigs repear

Rampage Fomula motherboard

ATI 3870 x2

WD74raptor

WD 200

segate 500

antec true power 1000

[BoneyardBrew Member]

One other thing that occurs to me... It may seem obvious, but have you checked that you have SATA drivers installed? I know when I installed 7 it was running OK-ish, but ran much better when I went and got the proper drivers from the Dell (in my case) website. In fact, I had to grab quite a few drivers for various hardware before everything was working just right.

I've looked all over, my motherboard's website, Intel, Google, and I can't find a SATA driver for my motherboard (ECS Elitegroup G31T-M) :(

My motherboard disk does include a SATA RAID driver though, is that what I'm looking for? Does the Chipset driver include a SATA Driver? I can get that off of the motherboard's website as well.

Can you look at the Cpu resource usage in task manager?

Here is a screenshot of the Task Manager displaying my CPU usage right after boot. It doesn't go above 50% for each core, but does spike randomly. Is that normal?

[Raa]

The O.P. also said he did a fresh install and got the problem - so we've ruled out ANY external application.

SATA drivers (unlikely) or hard drives are the only remaining thing that could produce this sort of problem.

It's also NOT related to the page file, moving it to another drive is going to achieve nothing, or degrade performance in many cases.

BB:

That's normal, services are starting and getting ready for use. (Indexing, Superfetch, etc).

In your device manager - what IDE controllers do you have listed?

They'll have the SATA controllers there, i'll let you know which driver/s you may need, if any.