HowTo Fix Long Startup, Boot, Restart times - iCloud or other item may be the culprit

[sharpuser]

I've helped out a few people recently with several devices, including more than one each of PC laptop, Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4, and Surface Book, complaining about Windows 10 taking too long to restart, start up, or boot. On the Surface devices, the white "Surface" word remains on an otherwise black screen, and the circular animation does not show. On a PC laptop, the screen remains black or blue, with no text. Some of these eventually continued starting up, but it may take upwards of 5 minutes.

A common culprit of this problem was iCloud for Windows, which inserts itself into the startup sequence before user login, rather than afterwards, when most items start. This is a known problem by Microsoft and by Apple. Prior to Windows 10, the workaround was to enable "Fast restart" in Power Options from the Control Panel.

The problem persists even with iCloud 5.1 for Windows, dated 12/7/2015.

Workaround with Windows 10
You can still use iCloud for Windows, but disable the startup services. Start iCloud after booting up. To disable, start the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and choose the Startup tab.

Note: You can identify items which may start before user login by the "High" Startup impact annotation. OneDrive is one such item, since login protocol (Hello, PIN, etc.) is sometimes accessed before user login, based upon prior connectivity. VPN connectivity items also may be in this list. This is okay. iCloud doing it is not okay, at the time of this writing.

 

[bluegrass]

I just wanted to thank you Sharp for all the great support that you give us here on this forum. I find your information useful and spot on. Would like to run into you sometime with your Surface and pick out in the boonies someday. I know you also put your Surfaces through a lot paces and come out smelling like a rose. you seemed to have overcome a lot of challenges quite a few of the forum users come up against with their Surface's. Care to give us a little perspective on how you do things with your Surface to not have many of the problems a lot of us users have with our Surfaces.

 

[sharpuser]

Thanks for the kind words.

To keep my Surface working well:
1) Get on problems right away. Lots of Registry and Web searches.
2) Fix one thing at a time.
3) Run Malwarebytes as often as I eat. I eat plenty.
4) Keep software install sets in a OneDrive folder marked "Software".
5) Sync ALL files to OneDrive. Back up to SD card.

 

[bluegrass]

Ditto for sure on Malwarebytes. Even though we have an anti-virus running, harmful stuff slips through and Malwarebytes is remarkable at finding them. I use it all the time when working on a clients computer.

 

[leeshor]

I should have said something about the iCloud stuff earlier. I don't use it but found it worked well to disable it on a customer's system who did.