Windows 10 slow boot on Thinkpad T440s

[bblake]

About 6 weeks ago I upgraded my T440s to Windows 10. After fixing all the issues, upgrading software etc (and there is a lot to do!) all was running well, and booting in about 45 seconds. I quite like Windows 10. As I usually keep my Thinkpads for years (last one lasted 7 years!) I wanted support beyond Jan 2020 as well as other benefits.

Then, about a month ago, boot times slowed right down to around 3 to 3.5 minutes. I don't recall changing anything at the time. This has also happened on my desktop machine, also running windows 10. Both are upgrades rather than clean installs.

I've have been searching all over for the solution. I've stopped all sorts of things starting, and gone through all the usual check lists that you can find via Google.

I've created a new user, and can logon to this user in less than a minute, so there is probably something wrong with my main user profile, if I could just find it!

In the application event log every time I boot, I see Event ID 6006: "The winlogon notification subscriber <Profiles> took 158 second(s) to handle the notification event (Logon)." (The time varies but are very close to the extra time the boot is taking). So this is my prime suspect. However, I am in a workgroup, not a domain, and most posts that reference how to stop the logon delay refer to domains, and are also pre-windows 10. I've tried the recommendations that seemed applicable without success.

If I log in from the alternative user, event ID 6006 does not feature in the logs. I could obviously try to move my applications over to the new user, but I have a lot of heavily configured software and this will take a long while - although maybe not as long as a clean install of windows 10, which is the alternative. In any case, my concern is that the problem will recur so I really want to find and fix the cause.

I did find the following (abbreviated) post in one forum – food for thought: "Having done many Win10 upgrades, I am of the opinion that UPGRADING to Win10 over an existing user profile IS NOT RELIABLE. It appears to produce a whole range of bizarre operational symptoms. To get your free upgrade, the only way is to upgrade in place. Thus the only reliable way to get an upgrade to Windows 10 is to do the upgrade in place, and then do a clean re-install of Windows 10…. This is the procedure that gets you the most reliable and stable end result."

Other Windows 10 users I know are also complaining that after initially booting very fast, it slows right down and it is back to the bad old days of having to make a cup of coffee while the boot completes!

[RealBlackStuff]

That would be most forum-members opinion as well: upgrade in place to get the W10 license, then do a fresh install.

Alternative 1) : (least recommended)
If you are the administrator, create another account, also as administrator.
The new account should get all your programs.
Then login as the new admin and see if things improve.
Try out all programs.
If you're happy, delete your old admin account.

Alternative 2): (just a tiny little bit recommended)
Install W10 from scratch

Alternative 3): (highly recommended)
Dump W10 and go back to W7.

[Puppy]

Definitely do the step 2), clean install. The same procedure is recommended for Windows Phone 8.1 -> Windows 10 Mobile upgrade, to perform restore to factory settings that is equivalent to Windows PC clean install.

On the other hand I do the boot sequence typically once per month just after Windows Updates otherwise I use hibernation so the boot time is a non-issue.

[bblake]

Many thanks for the suggestions. Yes - the way to keep going (which I will probably do) is to hibernate and boot just once a month. Hibernating and resume are both fast. When I have a bit of time I will probably try a clean install.

The areas where I find Windows 10 is better include faster resume from sleep, with the network coming active faster than Windows 7. Also I like the new start menu with programs sorted alphabetically. The Windows 8 right click start menu is also good to have. Cortana can be useful. But there's nothing that is a "must have" that I've found - given that I don't have a touch screen.

In the meantime I've still got my Windows 7 system available on a separate disk, so can easily go back if necessary.

[Dodge DeBoulet]

I know you're in a workgroup, but are you logging on as a local user or via a Windows Live account?

My (now retired) T420, upgraded from Windows 7 (rather than a clean install), booted to the logon screen in 15 seconds or less. Of course I was booting from an SSD rather than a hard drive, but I never used a Live account to log on.

[bblake]

The Thinkpad only has a local user ID.

My desktop machine does have a Windows Live ID - which goes back to the days of the Windows 8 technical preview! Both appear to be hanging for roughly the same period of time on logon - and both show event ID 6006.

[Puppy]

The areas where I find Windows 10 is better include faster resume from sleep, with the network coming active faster than Windows 7.

True but upgrading to SSD makes Windows 7 noticeably faster.

[bblake]

Yes indeed - SSDs can really speed things up - although not the Windows 10 boot time on my main machine which has a SSD as the system drive.

When I bought the T440s I needed at least 500GB (I've now upgraded to 1TB) and two years ago large SSDs were much more expensive than now. So I chose a mechanical hard drive. I have been very pleased just how fast the machine is given that it also uses a 16GB M.2 SSD as a cache. That appears to work well under Windows 10, once I downloaded and installed the latest version of Express Cache. Apart from the 3.5 minute boot, the performance is more than acceptable under windows 10.

Now if I could just crack what is causing the Event ID 6006: "winlogon notification subscriber <Profiles> took 158 second(s) to handle the notification event (Logon)." - assuming this is the problem - I could save myself doing a clean install of Windows 10. In the meantime I am mostly using hibernation, and here it is an advantage having a mechanical hard drive as writing out all that data can apparently affect the SSD life.

[bblake]

A short coda to this saga: This problem has been resolved for my Thinkpad, not by me, but presumably by the plethora of fixes that have been distributed recently, or possibly by Windows 10 anniversary edition which decided to install automatically. Boot time is down to about a minute in total (from pressing power on until the desktop shows). Event ID 6006 no longer shows in the event log. That's somewhat slower than Windows 7, but acceptable. (Yes I do use fast boot, but most of the time I just hibernate). So, I conclude this was a Microsoft problem, and their approach to thorough testing clearly hasn't improved with windows 10!

I never got round to reinstalling as planned due to the time involved.

[Puppy]

If the Fast Startup option does not work well it is always issue related to crappy 3rd party device drivers. Cutting costs (on good software developers) matters.

[kfzhu1229]

Trust Me, reinstalling Windows afterwards solves the problem. Your Windows won't be deactivated as long as you connect to the internet afterwards

[jaspen-meyer]

Boot time is down to about a minute in total (from pressing power on until the desktop shows).

Which is to say a T440s boots Windows 10 as fast as a 600E boots Debian 8.

[kfzhu1229]

Boot time is down to about a minute in total (from pressing power on until the desktop shows).

Which is to say a T440s boots Windows 10 as fast as a 600E boots Debian 8.

Not true. 600E has a longer post time at around 15-25 seconds. A 5400rpm T43 with PM 2.26 takes 35 seconds to boot windows 10 with post
If you talk about hot reboot then this is true as versions after 7 starts slower without fast startup