Windows 8.1 boot hangs (~120s) in "Session Init"

As the title already says, my Windows 8.1 installation take quite some time to boot (without FastBoot).

I managed to record an etl file of the boot process. The result is a very large file: 4.5GB, compressed: 250MB

When viewing this file in the Windows Performance Analyzer, I see that of the 144s boot time, about 120s are spent in "Session Init" phase and for about 90s of that time it is basically doing nothing, with smss.exe using full cpu on one core, and nearly no I/O happening.

Can you recommend a way to analyze the situation?

Tobias

Posted 2013-11-29T14:43:20.683

Reputation: 13

upload the compressed file, I'll take a look at it. – magicandre1981 – 2013-11-29T17:51:38.837

link – Tobias – 2013-11-29T21:14:55.530

you have not captured the correct data. Run this command: xbootmgr -trace boot -traceFlags BASE+LATENCY+DISK_IO_INIT+DISPATCHER+FILE_IO+FILE_IO_INIT+POWER+FILENAME -stackwalk profile+CSwitch+ReadyThread -resultPath C:\TEMP (this is one line! Copy it into a text file first to make sure it is one line) – magicandre1981 – 2013-11-30T06:39:23.797

link – Tobias – 2013-11-30T11:04:31.420

the stacks are still missing. Make sure the entry DisablePagingExecutive is set to 1 in the Registry (HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management). – magicandre1981 – 2013-11-30T14:13:58.750

http://sdrv.ms/1ahQcmJ – Tobias – 2013-11-30T15:31:13.460

still the same issue, the stacks are missing. Have you rebooted after making the change? Also post a picture of the registry key. – magicandre1981 – 2013-11-30T15:46:11.650

I set the registry value, then executed the command to record the trace -> which triggers a reboot. http://i.imgur.com/7mUaQXN.png

– Tobias – 2013-11-30T16:30:48.810

do a reboot before running the command. – magicandre1981 – 2013-11-30T16:32:55.163

http://sdrv.ms/18Q6Duq – Tobias – 2013-11-30T17:36:43.303

still the same. Which WPT version do you use? You MUST use the version from the Windows 8.1 SDK, not older version: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/desktop/bg162891

– magicandre1981 – 2013-11-30T18:57:53.377

http://sdrv.ms/1c3QZbZ – Tobias – 2013-11-30T22:32:43.793

no, I do not use Bitlocker in any way (at least as far as I know) – Tobias – 2013-12-01T08:36:43.637

In the control center I have "Bitlocker off" for all of my drives. – Tobias – 2013-12-01T08:55:30.457

I see that the operation which involves the bitlocker driver is to create the hibernation file. Try to turn it off if you don't use the fastBoot or hibernation and look if this helps. – magicandre1981 – 2013-12-01T17:56:05.443

Thank you, turning off hibernation worked! Any idea why this might be? I thought the hibernation file was created only once? – Tobias – 2013-12-02T12:00:50.783

I think the file is created again if the size changed. – magicandre1981 – 2013-12-02T17:58:43.503

Windows 8.1 boot hangs (~120s) in "Session Init"

Answers