Over the past several weeks one of my PCs (Win7 x64) has been exhibiting rather odd behaviour at boot - and sometimes at a reboot too (though less often). I get to the desktop fast enough, but although some startup items run (like batch scripts, run from the startup folder), others do not do so for perhaps 45" or so after the desktop appears (an example is a vbs script in the same startup folder; also my All_CPU desktop gadget hangs for the same period). If I try running certain programmes, say, MS Flight Simulator, that doesn't start until this 'partial freeze' ends, even though the process is immediately visible in Task Manager (zero CPU usage for the duration). MS Office programmes (for example) will run straight away however when I click on a shortcut to them. It's all very confusing: why some and not others? And why even at a boot from cold, don't I get the issue every single time?).

My SSDs test out healthy and I ran MemTest for several cycles with no problems. I have run tests on the GPU and CPU with no obvious problems being shown.

If I open the Task manager during this period after boot, (TM also opens fine), all CPU usage is at zero.. I wait and after some time, the rest of the programmes which also used to run immediately the desktop was visible come to life and CPU % values in TM start to show… After which everything is normal for as long as the PC is running. No performance issues or whatever…

I have run a several boot traces, using ProcMon, but they are inconclusive: it is probable that any delays that show are the result of the underlying problem, rather than the cause of it. Certainly stopping those programmes from running at startup didn't stop the problem from occurring. I have also tried a couple of boot traces using xperf, but firstly interpreting the results is hard and, moreover, the issue doesn't often present itself when the PC reboots, only when it boots after having been off (and even then, not every time). How would I configure xperf not to reboot, but to trace a boot after the PC has been off for a while? Is that possible? My trace parameters are, BTW: xbootmgr -trace boot -traceflags base+latency+dispatcher -stackwalk profile+cswitch+readythread -notraceflagsinfilename -postbootdelay



I didn't find the right solution from the internet.
References
https://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/407131-strange-boot-behaviour-partial-hangs-any-ideas.html



Energy Storage Video