windows 11 slow boot - winlogon takes a lot of time

shura30 · Oct 18, 2021

of course I ask the help of @zinou,
This is a clean install of windows 11, I am wasting a lot of time at boot on a rig that shouldn't have issues in general let alone at the logon screen
I've tried to analyze the .etl file but I can't understand what's causing the issue so I'm here asking for help

wpr.zip

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we.tl

bronskimac · Oct 18, 2021

I found the problem for me was one of my hard drives attached by USB to my PC. Remove any USB devices one at a time to see if one is playing up. Going to try the drive in a new enclosure to see if that fixes it.

shura30 · Oct 18, 2021

bronskimac said:
I found the problem for me was one of my hard drives attached by USB to my PC. Remove any USB devices one at a time to see if one is playing up. Going to try the drive in a new enclosure to see if that fixes it.

I don't use usb drives, only ssd, also no disc activity in the .etl

Hazel123 · Oct 18, 2021

Do you mean at the login screen or from boot up generally? On my unsupported 10" netbook (!) I find it boots to login extremely quickly but hangs at the login screen for some time until entering the desktop. I'm putting that down to it being unsupported hardware basically - an atom processor and only 2gb ram - so I don't mind. On the core i7 5th generation uefi laptop (8gb ram) everything is very fast at boot up and login.

zinou · Oct 18, 2021

shura30 said:
of course I ask the help of @zinou,
This is a clean install of windows 11, I am wasting a lot of time at boot on a rig that shouldn't have issues in general let alone at the logon screen
I've tried to analyze the .etl file but I can't understand what's causing the issue so I'm here asking for help

wpr.zip

1 file sent via WeTransfer, the simplest way to send your files around the world

we.tl

Hi

when say it takes a lot of time, it's 1 min, 2 or more?

shura30 · Oct 19, 2021

zinou said:
Hi

when say it takes a lot of time, it's 1 min, 2 or more?

it's roughly one minute, I can see the 45 seconds for the winlogon init but I'm unable to follow the stack to something useful

zinou · Oct 19, 2021

So you notice that the delay occurs after the logon?
I can see 43s of delay after you enter your credentials. is this where the delay occurs?

shura30 · Oct 19, 2021

zinou said:
So you notice that the delay occurs after the logon?
I can see 43s of delay after you enter your credentials. is this where the delay occurs?

the account is set for autologin, I disabled windows hello and used the old control userpasswords2 method, it's a microsoft account.

I only get to see the login animation with the spinning circle for something around those 45 seconds before the desktop appears
the stack tells me nothing

and that svchost.exe(4736) even less:

zinou · Oct 19, 2021

My guess is that the issue is may be related to the network.

Are you using a Microsoft account to log in ?
Have you tried to log in with a local account and see if it's faster?

zinou · Oct 19, 2021

I saw that you mentioned in your previous post that you are using a Microsoft account;
So yeah, create a local user account and log in with that account and see the difference.

shura30 · Oct 19, 2021

zinou said:
I saw that you mentioned in your previous post that you are using a Microsoft account;
So yeah, create a local user account and log in with that account and see the difference.

just tested it this way:

- after creating a new local user (without deleting the ms account, can't do that now for various reasons) . Removed autologins and rebooted, blackscreen until the login prompt but after picking the user (whether it was the ms account or not) desktop came almost immediately
- set autologin for the local user, no changes still slow

created another .etl in this scenario and it's almost identical to the one I've already posted.

can you group CPU usage time by 'timeline by process, thread' ?
does it give you some insight?

zinou · Oct 19, 2021

- after creating a new local user (without deleting the ms account, can't do that now for various reasons) . Removed autologins and rebooted, blackscreen until the login prompt but after picking the user (wdsdhether it was the ms account or not) desktop came almost immediately

If I do understand; when you disable the autologin the boot is faster?

shura30 · Oct 19, 2021

zinou said:
If I do understand; when you disable the autologin the boot is faster?

it's faster only after the prompt appears on screen
before that it's just a black screen for those 45 seconds

zinou · Oct 19, 2021

shura30 said:
it's faster only after the prompt appears on screen
before that it's just a black screen for those 45 seconds

Can you take a boot trace, while disabling the autologin? it may give us another perspective!

Check the "Network IO activity and the Registry activity"

shura30 · Oct 19, 2021

zinou said:
Can you take a boot trace, while disabling the autologin? it may give us another perspective!

Check the "Network IO activity and the Registry activity"

View attachment 10663

I'll do it as soon as I get back home, to your knowledge, the registry i/o activity logs passwords?

zinou · Oct 19, 2021

shura30 said:
I'll do it as soon as I get back home, to your knowledge, the registry i/o activity logs passwords?

No, it doesn't record passwords :)

shura30 · Oct 20, 2021

zinou said:
Can you take a boot trace, while disabling the autologin? it may give us another perspective!

Check the "Network IO activity and the Registry activity"

View attachment 10663

there you go

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zinou · Oct 21, 2021

I Do not see anything interesting in the network or the registry graphs!

what I suspect is the graphic card driver, for two reasons;
You said that you see a black screen during the login => There was similar cases were the graphic card was the culprit.

during the waiting period, I notice the dwm.exe (Desktop Window Manager) process running => dwm is the process that renders the desktop.

I think your AMD Radeon driver is at the latest version, so no update is possible for now!

what you could test to prove this theory, is to restart in the safe mode and see if the login takes the same time!

shura30 · Oct 22, 2021

zinou said:
You said that you see a black screen during the login => There was similar cases were the graphic card was the culprit.

happened only a few times without autologin. with it enabled I can see the spinning wheel for the whole delay
anyways, today amd and microsoft released a couple patches to fix some bugs with amd products, so far I'm booting straight to desktop without issues..only booted up twice today, I'll keep it under observation and report