Slow Windows booting and Performance

Question

My system configuration is the following:

Processor: Intel Core(TM) i7-4500U CPU @1.80GZ 2.40GZ
RAM: 16.0 GB (14.8 GB usable)
System TYpe: x64-based processor.

I'm using Dell Inspirion. Running on Windows 10 and is just 2 years old. The age didn't affect the performance drastically.

But the system booting, performance is extremely slow. I don't know how I can capture "slowness" in any metric. So not putting it here.

My question is why my system is slow, even though I've very good specifications? And how I can improve the performance?

Edit:

Please find the screenshot of startup:

Edit

Dell Hardware Test:

Resource Monitor:

System Report

Answer 1

After I loaded the ETL into WPA.exe, I clicked on Profile-> Apply, "browse catalog" and select the file FullBoot.Boot.wpaprofile I saw this overview

Boot to desktop is done in 79 seconds, and Winlogon-Phase and ExplorerInit are slow:

What Happens in This Subphase
The WinLogonInit subphase begins when SMSSInit completes and starts Winlogon.exe. During WinLogonInit, the user logon screen appears, the service control manager starts services, and Group Policy scripts run. WinLogonInit ends when the Explorer process starts.

Visual Cues WinLogonInit begins shortly before the logon screen appears. It ends just before the desktop appears for the first time.

WinLogonInit Performance Vulnerabilities Many operations occur in parallel during WinLogonInit. On many systems, this subphase is CPU bound and has large I/O demands. Good citizenship from the services that start in this phase is critical for optimized boot times. Services can declare dependencies or use load order groups to ensure that they start in a specific order. Windows processes load order groups in serial order. Service initialization delays in an early load order group block subsequent load order groups and can possibly block the boot process .

ExplorerInit Subphase

What Happens in This Subphase

The ExplorerInit subphase begins when Explorer.exe starts. During ExplorerInit, the system creates the desktop window manager (DWM) process, which initializes the desktop and displays it for the first time. This phase is CPU intensive. The initialization of DWM and desktop occurs in the foreground, while in the background the service control manager (SCM) starts services and the memory manager prefetches code and data. On most systems ExplorerInit is CPU bound, and timing issues are likely the result of a simple resource bottleneck.

Visual Cues
ExplorerInit begins just before the desktop appears for the first time. There is no clear visual cue to indicate the end of ExplorerInit.

Looking at the CPU Usage (Sampled) shows no bottleneck:

so, check the disk and here you have the bootleneck of the system:

As you can see the disk is most of the time complete busy. Your WDC WD10JPVX-75JC3T0 is a 5400rpm drive which is not fast to handle all IO requests that occur during boot and later starting all startup tools.

You can do a temporary speedup of boot with xbootmgr, but to fix the slowness replace the ugly slow WD drive with a SSD like the Samsung 850 EVO

Answer 2

As this seems to be an ongoing thread, I will convert my comments into a unified "answer" as I believe some of the steps will assist others experiencing this fault.

This section will cover testing hardware issues:

Testing your Hard-Drive and SSD for Defects

Of course, you can use command-line to perform basic tests:

chkdsk.exe /R /X - R implies you use /F - fix errors on disk and locate bad sectors.

As specified, for your specific device you can use the dell Desktop client, or Quick Scan:

The Quick Test scans the hard drive, memory, processor and disc drive of your Windows-based PC or tablet for errors.

Otherwise, you can use the Windows Error Checking Tool.

Test your RAM

Open an elevated command prompt and run the following command:

mdsched.exe

This will test your RAM on your next PC boot.

System Integrity

Run the following command and it will identify if you have any 'System Integrity Violations':

sfc.exe /scannow

There are, of course, third party tools you can check:

1. Advanced System Care
2. Auslogic Boost Speed
3. Iolo System Mechanic 12

Note: These tools all act differently, and I would suggest you not use them in unison.

Windows Perfomance Toolkit

As mentioned by MagicAndre191, install the Windows Performance Toolkit, explicitly WPRUI.

I will not go into detail, but you can look at this tool in detail (to an extent) from TechNet.

Uninstall Redundant Apps and Services

As advised, stop apps from starting:

1. Right click on your taskbar
2. Click Task Manager
3. Locate the Startup Tab
4. Right click and disable useless apps

Then, I would suggest setting services to manual, or even disabled.

Here is a small list of services that are "Safe to disable". If you are not sure how to do this, read this blog.

Things such as defragging your registry, cleaning redundant files from registry and your PC may slightly improve your performance as well.

This answer will be updated as we go along.