Stalling on Start and Shutdown

[ron6468]

My Surface Pro 3 w/ Win 8.1 is only 2 weeks old and has had one Windows update so far. I don't have any unusual apps or files, programs, etc. I've used up about 40% of my 256 GB but also have a 64 GB Micro installed. Lately, regardless of battery strength, it can sometimes take more than 2 minutes to startup after I input my password. The circle just goes round and round - then eventually goes to the Startup screen. Sometimes it takes just as long to shutdown. I also get a long pause occasionally when opening Windows Explorer.
Any ideas where to start looking?

 

[malberttoo]

Hi Ron, welcome to the forum!

While it's running, can you open the Task Manager, and see if anything is hitting the CPU especially hard?

 

[UltraDroid]

Best of luck with your new toy!

 

[yonghong]

You install too many apps, that's why. I got sp3 128g for 1.5 months not even use half of 128g.

 

[kristalsoldier]

@OP...why don't you open up Task Manager and see what programs/ apps you have enabled on start-up. Selectively remove them from opening up at start-up. You may see an improvement in start-up speed.

Edit: Oops! I think Michael has pre-empted me on the Task Manager stuff. I second his suggestion - oldest trick in the book for Windows systems.

 

[ron6468]

Even with 3-4 apps running in the background, the CPU is at <3%, the Memory averaging 24%.
Task Mgr Startup shows only my Wireless Printer showing - nothing else. I tried msconfig.exe from c: prompt and this Win8.1 system asks me to view Start in Task Manager. I find it very hard to believe this system starts up with nothing other than my printer file. Win7 with which I am very familiar was more useful in this area. I don't have any more apps than the average person and I never leave them running in the background so very unlikely the problem.
Any experience with Win 8.1 file cleanup capability - if that's even a solution?

 

[GreyFox7]

My Surface Pro 3 w/ Win 8.1 is only 2 weeks old and has had one Windows update so far. I don't have any unusual apps or files, programs, etc. I've used up about 40% of my 256 GB but also have a 64 GB Micro installed. Lately, regardless of battery strength, it can sometimes take more than 2 minutes to startup after I input my password. The circle just goes round and round - then eventually goes to the Startup screen. Sometimes it takes just as long to shutdown. I also get a long pause occasionally when opening Windows Explorer.
Any ideas where to start looking?

Might be related to the patches that were pulled see ...
http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/microsoft-pulls-updates.10518/

 

[Bandito]

It almost sounds like it's still trying to install updates at startup and shutdown, but running into issues. It could be related to the above-mentioned update "recall".

The way I've typically solved these types of issues is to run a utility that logs all of the startup processes when they launch and then logs their startup completion time. You can then review this for items that are taking a long time to start up and go from there. Unfortunately, I don't recall the name of the utility as I haven't needed to use it in many years, but hopefully some googling will help you locate it. Try searching for Windows Startup Logger or something similar to that.

Best of luck to you in tracking this down.

 

[malberttoo]

@ron6468 since it sounds like you're pretty competent with Windows in general... keep in mind the nuclear option of doing a full reset/restore from within Win 8. It's the same thing as re-installing Windows. I was completely invested in my i5 SP3, had all my programs installed, files moved in, etc. Got the SP3 a few days after it launched. But that was the time when all the firmware fixes and patches were coming out, and my machine was just buggy. I finally just copied all my stuff onto a Micro SD card, and did the full restore and my SP3 was completely different after that. Most all the bugs were gone and I got a solid hour more in battery life.

Just a thought, when you consider how much time you may spend chasing an issue down, vs. how long to just start over.