Why has my boot time doubled?
Why has my boot time doubled?
My SanDisk Ultra II 480GB boot drive used to start Windows in under 30 seconds. Over time I removed unnecessary files and moved them to another SSD and HDD, leaving 193GB available. Compared to the previous setup with less than 100GB free, it now has more space. Boot times have stayed around one minute and five seconds during testing. I've attached some relevant photos for your reference. Thank you!
Check if you have SMART data available or retrieve predictive failure indicators for the device.
You've visited some questionable websites or downloads that helped protect your system. AVG is one such tool that often produces false alarms and can affect your computer's speed. A strong adblock can cut those false positives by nearly 98%, leaving just a small chance of encountering risky sites. If you still visit sketchy places, consider using a virtual machine to handle the downloads safely.
SMART offers standardized metrics to assess drive health, aiding in forecasting both immediate and long-term failures. In Command Prompt (not PowerShell), run wmic diskdrive get model,name,serialnumber,status to see a list of connected drives with status labels—'OK' for good and 'Bad' or 'Caution' for issues. In an elevated prompt, use wmic /namespace:\root\wmi path MSStorageDriver_FailurePredictStatus to check predictive failure indicators, where 'OK' means no issues and 'False' signals a problem. This step is part of my initial troubleshooting approach.
I was removing malicious files from old hard drives. At first I didn’t use safe mode and stayed connected to the network, which blocked some files. Later I switched to safe mode and malwarebytes handled most of them. Others said Windows Defender works, but I want to check if extra antivirus is necessary—even for tech-savvy users. Until then, I’ll keep it for reassurance and it didn’t cause boot problems before. From what Skim mentioned, it might be outdated, so if needed I’ll move everything to my new SSD and keep a spare.
Keep in mind that although this drive is quite old, your activity level might not have been sufficient to cause the predictive or aging issues you're experiencing. After completing this troubleshooting stage, it will provide further details to help you decide the next actions, as the problem could be resolved even if the drive itself is still functioning properly.