dv7, very long boot time - black screen and can move mouse before desktop shows...ideas?

over the last couple months, i've noticed that it takes a VERY long time for my dv7 to boot up. It's a 6000 series with sandy bridge, windows 7 and switchable grapics. I get the black background with the windows logo and the next screen with the blue background just fine. Those are about normal. Then right after that is typically where my desktop will display. Instead of that, i get a black screen that stays still for about a minute. During this screen, I can see the mouse move around but nothing else is displayed.

I already confirmed that I turned the switchable graphics off. I also checked the list of msconfig items that I've turned off in the last 3-4 months. Nothing suspicious.

If you guys have any ideas, please help me out. thanks.

 

Sorry to hear of your issue… but unfortunately we just ran into the same problem.

My daughter brought her DV4t home from college for Thanksgiving break with the same Long BOOT Delay. It completes POST and displays the Win7 splash screen as normal but then sits for about 40 seconds before it completes. I installed a Samsung 840 500GB SSD in the unit back in August along with a fresh clean Win7 Pro 64 install. When she took the little unit off to school it’d do a complete BOOT to the desktop with WiFi connected in 20 to 25 seconds. Now it takes about 70 seconds. Still not bad… but clearly something has changed.

Like you, I checked BOOT logs, Startup items, Services, Diagnostic Performance Logs, did verbose BOOT, did clean starts, changed/reinstalled chipset drivers, WiFi drivers, AHCI drivers, removed Windows updates… so on and so on. Nothing helped... but I suspect that it is either SSD related or a stray Windows update. Funny though that after you get to the desktop all is normal with SSD speed at 275 Read/ 250 write on a SATA II limited unit. Starts Photoshop 6 in under 5 seconds.

I did an extensive web search but never found anything definitive…but it does seem like others are experiencing the same. When my daughter brings the unit home for Christmas break I plan to backup her data again and install a base Win7image (Win7 SP1 with all drivers & setting) and see what happens. If that doesn’t fix the issue then I’ll start from scratch again… PITA. Until then… if you happen to solve your issue… post it up… I’m sure others will be interested.


Best & Merry Christmas,

Dave

 

Hi Dave...

I started deleting more unneeded apps and it worked. I am not sure which app it was but it's running fine again. It was definitely an app that wasn't critical so be careful so you don't delete one that's needed. thanks.

 

Thanks, that’s good to know.

Her DV4t is loaded with pretty basic stuff with only a few extras. Perhaps one of these apps are common to the ones you deleted? Adobe…Flash-Reader-InDesign-Photoshop-Premier Elements, MS…Office 10 Pro 64-MS Security Essentials-Live Mail-Skype-Silverlight, Apple…iTunes & Quicktime, Cannon basic print drivers, Malwarebytes-inactive, Spybot-inactive, Spotify, Audacity, YouCam, CCleaner, and 7-zip.

Anything familiar?

 

Well… over the holidays I tried everything I know to solve the long boot issue short of a fresh install without success. Last resort, I did a fresh Win7 64 install. All is well and from cold BOOT to a complete desktop with Wifi connected is about 22 secs.

Very strange though… same hardware, same OS, same drivers, same software…. issue solved . Go figure?