Windows 11 PC spends 10-15min on black screen after post but before Windows login appears

thedaveabides · Jul 10, 2024

My poor kiddo has been dealing with these sometimes 15+ minute restarts for some time now. When he resets his PC, everything about the shutdown seems normal, and the machine momentarily cycles power and comes right back up and then posts, all at decent speed......but then when the screen goes black - normally for a few moments before the Windows login comes up - it hangs there for a truly absurd amount of time. On average, it hangs for 10-15 minutes, but it has taken even a bit longer than that.
We've attempted to tackle the problem several times, eventually tabling it after exhausting our patience for the evening and returning to it another day. It's been several months now. I couldn't possibly remember all of the things we've checked/tried/etc but I'll be sure to edit them into this post as I think of them if that is helpful. I do recall I had him run the DISM CheckHealth, ScanHealth, and RestoreHealth functions but I forgot to have him run the SFC. I'll do that in the morning.
Any other ideas are so appreciated and if I can provide any further details to help anyone's thinker along, I'll be happy to do so. Thanks all!

System Spec:
MSI MAG B760 Tomahawk WiFi
Intel Core i5 13600k
MSI MAG CoreLiquid C360 AIO
32GB (2x16GB) Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-5600
1TB Western Digital Black SN770 PCIe-4 NVME
4TB Toshiba X300 SATA-6 HDD
MSI MAG A750GL 750w PCIE5/ATX3.0 PSU

glasskuter · Jul 10, 2024

Welcome to the forum. Issues like this usually come down to process of elimination. Do your testing with overclocking off.
Here are some things to try.

1. Remove all external devices except keyboard and mouse.

2. Make sure all drivers from your mobo manufacturer are up to date. Make sure UEFI bios version is current.

3. After SFC, eliminate software conflict by performing a clean boot.. If it doesn't happen in a clean boot, you have some software conflicting with Windows. Brink's procedure will help you weed out which one. Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 11 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts Tutorial

4. See if it happens in safe boot. Boot to Safe Mode in Windows 11 Tutorial

5. For cases like this, I keep one of the live linux distros around on a usb stick to boot from. There are many live distros, but Ubuntu or Mint Cinnamon are my preferences. Though it's not a definitive test of your issue being hardware, if the machine hardware works correctly with Linux,, it is a good tool to help decide where to concentrate your efforts first. The first boot of Linux will be slow as it has to load Linux into memory. But once it does, you can do a restart from within Linux to see if you get a normal restart time. Do several restarts.

Please visit wikiHow directly

Note: You will have to turn off secure boot to run a live linux distro.

If the issue also happens in Linux, I would look toward hardware being the issue and that will be another process of elimination so report back.
If the issue does not happen in Linux, try doing a repair install of Windows. Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade Tutorial

.

budeone · Jul 10, 2024

I'm going through the same thing.. It's about five or six min but it seems like hours. I have come to the conclusion my mobo must be having issues. I've tried everything and nothing makes it worse or better. It also does not matter what os I use. The mono does throw out a code once in a while. I think it was a short or something but only does that here and there... My mono is getting old so I'm getting ready for a new one. Check to see if your mono throws out any codes.

thedaveabides · Jul 10, 2024

glasskuter said:
Welcome to the forum. Issues like this usually come down to process of elimination. Do your testing with overclocking off.
Here are some things to try.

1. Remove all external devices except keyboard and mouse.

2. Make sure all drivers from your mobo manufacturer are up to date. Make sure UEFI bios version is current.

3. After SFC, eliminate software conflict by performing a clean boot.. If it doesn't happen in a clean boot, you have some software conflicting with Windows. Brink's procedure will help you weed out which one. Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 11 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts Tutorial

4. See if it happens in safe boot. Boot to Safe Mode in Windows 11 Tutorial

5. For cases like this, I keep one of the live linux distros around on a usb stick to boot from. There are many live distros, but Ubuntu or Mint Cinnamon are my preferences. Though it's not a definitive test of your issue being hardware, if the machine hardware works correctly with Linux,, it is a good tool to help decide where to concentrate your efforts first. The first boot of Linux will be slow as it has to load Linux into memory. But once it does, you can do a restart from within Linux to see if you get a normal restart time. Do several restarts.

Please visit wikiHow directly
Note: You will have to turn off secure boot to run a live linux distro.

If the issue also happens in Linux, I would look toward hardware being the issue and that will be another process of elimination so report back.
If the issue does not happen in Linux, try doing a repair install of Windows. Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade Tutorial

.

Thanks so much for taking the time out to respond. I appreciate having several avenues to try. I'm not versed in Linux but I'm quite aware of it's usefulness in troubleshooting, among many other things, and I definitely enjoy reading my way into familiarity with new systems and resources, so I'll get acquainted with Ubuntu (I think I've used it in the past somewhere). I'll report back a bit later, hopefully with good news. Thanks again!

glasskuter · Jul 10, 2024

I forgot to mention, turn off fast startup. Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 11 Tutorial

RJARRRPCGP · Jul 10, 2024

Try it with the SATA HDD unplugged, if the OS is on the NVMe SSD.

thedaveabides · Jul 12, 2024

glasskuter said:
I forgot to mention, turn off fast startup. Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 11 Tutorial

I got super busy for a minute and couldn't pour much time into this but I'm back at it and in for the long haul. The kid (I say kid but he's 21) got impatient and simply installed a new copy of Windows. However, he did it without a low level format and I suspect that may have left some nastiness behind because even after a format and reinstallation of Windows, the symptoms persist. The thing still takes anywhere from 5-15 minutes to hit the Win loading screen, the mouse movement lags and stutters like crazy, the video and sound problems are still there, we even pulled the RAM from my machine and put it in his - no change....
Even though I've done a couple of the steps already, I'm getting ready to work through Glasskuter's process exactly as (he?) posted it. If I get nowhere with that, I may unplug everything the computer can operate without, dump all the partitions, do a low level format, turn off the router (so that Windows installation can't pull updates just yet, and reinstall a fresh copy of Windows. I'm certainly open to further ideas.

glasskuter · Jul 12, 2024

thedaveabides said:
we even pulled the RAM from my machine and put it in his - no change

This is all fine and good as a test IF your ram is on MSI QVL list as being compatible with his motherboard.

thedaveabides said:
The kid (I say kid but he's 21) got impatient and simply installed a new copy of Windows. However, he did it without a low level format and I suspect that may have left some nastiness behind.

Exactly what do you mean by nastiness? If he removed all partitions and installed Windows on unallocated space(as per the clean install tutorial, that is all that's required. A low level format is not required to clean install windows.

thedaveabides · Jul 12, 2024

glasskuter said:
This is all fine and good as a test IF your ram is on MSI QVL list as being compatible with his motherboard.

Exactly what do you mean by nastiness? If he removed all partitions and installed Windows on unallocated space(as per the clean install tutorial, that is all that's required. A low level format is not required to clean install windows.

Fill disclosure, I'm assuming he deleted the partitions but I haven't asked yet - he's at work right now. The RAM is in fact on the QVL. The nastiness is what was describing in the first paragraph of my post: "The thing still takes anywhere from 5-15 minutes to hit the Win loading screen, the mouse movement lags and stutters like crazy, the video and sound problems are still there"
It's a mix of symptoms so dissimilar that I really wonder of there are multiple problems going on. As of this morning, he have a huge pile of Events 154, 6155, 201, 202, 141, 10016, with some scattered outliers tossed in. And then there's Event 236 - 203 of them all registered at exactly 8:13:09 this morning. I'm lost

thedaveabides · Jul 12, 2024

The low level format idea was just in the interest of due diligence and covering all my bases.

Lawnmower74 · Jul 12, 2024

Have you tried hitting escape while on black screen . I had similar problem found pushing escape opened windows

glasskuter · Jul 12, 2024

Two more things. Does your 4TB Toshiba X300 SATA-6 HDD have an old operating system on it? Did your son remove this drive BEFORE doing a clean install on the nvme? I ask this because if he did not, there's a chance the boot configuration data was written to this drive rather than to the nvme drive.

You can use Seatools bootable to test the drive offline. Scroll down in this site. It's instruction guide is also there. SeaTools | Support Seagate US

Did you try the live linux distro idea? Safe boot? Of course I have no way of knowing for sure, I will speculate that, if you have latest drivers installed, you have a hardware problem.
(cpu, mobo,drive,)

thedaveabides · Jul 13, 2024

glasskuter said:
Two more things. Does your 4TB Toshiba X300 SATA-6 HDD have an old operating system on it? Did your son remove this drive BEFORE doing a clean install on the nvme? I ask this because if he did not, there's a chance the boot configuration data was written to this drive rather than to the nvme drive.

You can use Seatools bootable to test the drive offline. Scroll down in this site. It's instruction guide is also there. SeaTools | Support Seagate US

Did you try the live linux distro idea? Safe boot? Of course I have no way of knowing for sure, I will speculate that, if you have latest drivers installed, you have a hardware problem.
(cpu, mobo,drive,)

Hey, I hope everyone is having a good night. I had to be gone all afternoon and evening but I'm back in from of the boy's computer and getting ready to try your suggestions in the order they appears. I'll keep you apprised of my progress and thanks again for your help.

thedaveabides · Jul 13, 2024

Quick update: I noticed something last night - I was mistaken in my original post about this problem; the black screen waiting time is occurring before POST and I noted also that the monitors are kicking on Everytime it powers on, despite the lack of video.

BamaInArk · Jul 13, 2024

thedaveabides said:
Quick update: I noticed something last night - I was mistaken in my original post about this problem; the black screen waiting time is occurring before POST and I noted also that the monitors are kicking on Everytime it powers on, despite the lack of video.

Glad you posted this nugget. As I was reading the topic I had the same question I was going to ask about. Coincidentally I have 2 systems that are very similar, just not as long a delay. I have an 11th gen Z590 motherboard/11700k that is slow on an initial power on but it happens during POST or actually before POST. Oddly this motherboard was RMAd due to a bad ethernet port and replaced but the same thing happened with both motherboards. Once it's powered on and running a reboot works normally with no delay. It seems to only occur during an initial power on after it's been sitting. I suspect it's some kind of hardware issue but can't pinpoint it. In my case it's been going on long enough and has had multiple bios updates which did not seem to correct the issue. It's not a primary system and typically sits in a corner so not powered on often.
A few weeks ago I decided to dig into it deeper suspected a memory issue. As I powered it on it worked fine without the delay. So put it aside again until a later date. I still suspect it's some sort of RAM/Memory issue but can't be sure.
I have another older Z390/9900k system that occasionally does the same exact thing. Both Asus motherboards.

Again this is pre-boot and does not appear to be OS related.

thedaveabides · Jul 13, 2024

Thanks BamaInArk for some extra insight. At this point in the morning, I've stripped out the video card, the second drive (I mistaken on that too - it's not a platter drive; it's another NVME drive), made a fresh installation media and attempted several installations - including trying each NVME drive by itself - to no avail. I feel at this point like we must certainly have a hardware problem(s) and given the way the the problems are spread across the system, I'm starting to get the feeling it's a bad motherboard. /tear

Windows 11 PC spends 10-15min on black screen after post but before Windows login appears

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