Windows 10 fast startup feature making the login slow

Question

This problem showed its first symptoms about a year ago. I noticed that after a Windows Update (i think it wasn't any of the big semestral ones) my system started to experiment quite high login times. Exact description of the problem is:

• Windows starts up as fast as usual, until the login screen is shown
• After entering the password, the login screen takes about 2 or 3 minutes (much slower than usual, as I have a SSD)
• After the login screen fades I get a black screen with a cursor (not frozen), and essentially the PC doesn't respond to anything (not even CTRL + ALT + SUPR), for another 2 or 3 minutes
• Then the desktop shows up, and the system starts responding as fast as usual

As the problem emerged during the login time, I initially thought it was related somehow to my account, and I tried everything I could think related to that (creating a new one, delinking it from my Microsoft account, changing privileges....). None of that helped.

Then I noticed it only happened while booting up the system, and not while rebooting. Eventually I remembered that the fast-startup feature only worked while booting, and not in rebooting, so I disabled fast-startup, and voila! Fast login times again (about 5 seconds).

I didn't understand the problem, but as it was solved I forgot about it... Until last Windows Fall Creators Update automatically enabled again fast-startup for me (why???) and the problem emerged again. The solution was easy, but still I don't understand why fast-startup is making my login process slower.

Does anyone has a clue about what could be happening? The problem has an easy work around, but it is still a problem, and something might be wrong in my system.

HW Configuration:

• mobo: ASRock X79 Extreme4
• CPU: Intel Core i7-3820 3.60Ghz
• RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1600 PC3-12800 16GB 2x8GB CL10
• GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 OC 2GB GDDR5
• SSD: Samsung Evo 240 GB (sorry, no reference, it was a gift and I'm not in this system right now)
• HDD: Seagate Desktop 7200.14 1TB SATA 3
• PSU: Nox Urano TX 850W

Answer 1

Fast-startup may cause certain hardware components not to be initialize properly (completely). In your case, the problem is with the video card initialization when switching to advanced graphics mode.