Windows 7 taking over 30 minutes to boot up from a shutdown or restart

Hi. On my main laptop (Windows 7), I use 24/7, every time I shut down and restart, it takes a very long time to reach the windows desktop, maybe 30 minutes or longer.

I believe that it may be due to an issue with the Registry. The reason I say this is because:
* when I am searching inside it, (Ctrl+F) it takes a very long, long, long time or it just hangs and I have to open task manager and kill the process. This is why I just put the laptop to sleep instead of shutting it down since coming out of sleep mode is about 2 seconds.
* also, saving the registry via Export, takes a very long time to complete, at 25 minutes and 10.4GB filesize.

It appears that the registry is corrupt or something, and that may be the reason for the long amount of time to boot up.

Is there a *free* way to fix this?

* my profile lists windows 10. I have another laptop and table with windows 10 that are fairly new. But my main laptop is windows 7 and is the one with the long bootup/registry issue.

The title of your thread says Windows 7, your profile lists Windows 10 and you are on the Windows 11 forum.
Either way and whatever OS you use, you should try creating a new user and log on as the new user.
See if that makes a difference. Such a large user registry hive is not normal.
If the problem persists, only a clean install will set you right.

I have updated my topic to indicate the OS version. I meant to note that but forgot.

Your title says you are running Windows 7? This is the Windows 11 forum. There is a separate forum for Windows 7 Windows 7 Help Forums However, Windows 7 is no longer supported for a while now. You list your computer under your profile as a Windows 10 Tablet?

The problem you are facing is not a Registry error. It is most likely the HDD/SSD is aging and probably has bad sectors. Please unplug all external and internal drives other the Windows Disk.
Download Crystal Disk Info and or DiskGenius in my signature. View the SMART Info. This will give you a quick snapshot of your drives health. If it is anything less then Good, it needs to be replaced.
If it says it's good, you can run a Surface Test which is similar to running Check Disk but it shows a map of the sectors on the drive.

As above > please open a new thread in Seven Forums

I downloaded and ran both apps, CrystalDiskInfo and DiskGenius

CrystalDiskInfo report = health status = (good, 5400 RPM, 44575 hours, 41 c)
DiskGenius report = (99.9 perc excellent, a few good, and 2 normal sector readings, no bad sectors)

If you are running a 5400 rpm mechanical disk it will always be slow.

In addition to that there might be problems with the os.

I would suggest

1. buy a sata ssd. They were very cheap a couple of months ago but they all seem to have gone up again. I would suggest 500gb minimum, larger if you have the funds.
It is the best upgrade you can make. It would feel like a different machine, even using sata2 port.

On my main laptop (Windows 7), I use 24/7

Click to expand...

In that case it is definitely worth getting an ssd.


2. back up your win7 activation and drivers using dism++
Backup the activation

3. Install win7 to the ssd ( use the refresh media that already includes SP1 ) and then restore the activation and drivers using dism++

or you could update the installation media first before applying it. But you would still need to backup the current activation and then restore it.

**********************************************************************************************************************************************

If you dont want to buy an ssd and are content with a clanky old mechanical

1. back up your win7 activation and drivers using dism++

2. create a new partition on your existing disk

3. Install win7 to the new partition ( use the refresh media that already includes SP1 ) and then restore the activation and drivers using dism++

As far as I can remember, this laptop used to take about 2 minutes to boot up from power-on. And I used to complain that was too long, back then LoL.

Replacing the disk with an SSD will greatly improve the bootup time speed and other issues you are having.

wuser said:

I have updated my topic to indicate the OS version. I meant to note that but forgot.

Click to expand...

I stopped counting how many times, in other threads, that you were advised to use the corresponding forums for your operating systems. What you’re actually doing, is taking up the time of some very experienced Windows Eleven users and lessening the time they spend on members that are running Windows Eleven. Stop being so selfish.