Laptop suddenly takes minutes to load my MS Info when booting.

[MisterLilBig]

Hey guys, about 2 days ago I turn on my laptop and it takes 5-10 minutes until Windows shows my name so that I can put my password in to log on. The clock and image shows up and I click the mouse or press "enter" but it goes to show my name but does not, it takes many attempts for it to finally show my name and let me put my password in. Oh, and I have to put my password now, I used to just use a PIN# so it suddenly took out the PIN# I had.

What happened?

I have done a Windows RAM diagnostics, all good. Ccleaner and Defragger has been used also, all good and clean.

And, before this problem started happening, my screen sometimes went black and I had to power off the laptop by holding the power button, the light stayed ON when the screen went black, so it was not hibernating or sleep mode.

Any help would be great!

 

[UsandThem]

I'd try these two things first:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026529/windows-10-using-system-file-checker

http://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

These two things will eliminate the possibility of some of the OS files being corrupted, or your drive beginning to go bad (dying).

 

[MisterLilBig]

I ran Avast Free Antivirus, all good.

With Crystaldisk, Health says "Good". Something that stands out is the "Read Error Rate", it is 30 points higher than Worst. Not sure what else to read from this?

The System File Checker did not find any integrity violations.

Also, other than the incredible problem delay which I explained in the first post, the computer runs normally after I manage to sign in. It does seem to take an extra few seconds to turn off tho.

 

[MisterLilBig]

So, it's working now and with PIN as fast as before.

It seems that a high % of HDD Fragmentation was causing the issue? All I did was run Defraggler a few Quick times and a full Defrag without turning the PC off in the last 2 days. And today when I turn it on, it is All As It Should Be.

I did not Free Up Space(7%), that was going to be my next check since my HDD is 93% Used.

 

[Smoove910]

Install the free version of CCleaner. There's an option in there for it to search your HD for programs/files that are taking up the most space. Very good free program if you ask me.

 

[MisterLilBig]

Oh, yes. I use CCleaner but I didn't uninstall anything to free up space. If the defragmentation didn't do anything, Freeing Up HDD space was my other option. I wanted to test if fragmentation could have been the cause of it, and so far, it seems so.

Findings: It seems that a 16% Fragmentation on a 500GB HDD on a laptop which has 7% Free Space as reported by Defragger can cause Win10 MS Account sign in loading times to increase significantly, by minutes, and also to forget/ignore that you have a PIN login set up and force you to use your password.

 

[corkyg]

You need a bigger HDD. 7% freespace is inadequate.
https://www.howtogeek.com/324956/how-much-free-space-should-you-leave-on-your-windows-pc/

My personal limit is 20%.